


Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground

by secret_samadhi



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, BAMF!Cas, Canon Divergent, Cas watches Dean rake leaves, Dirty Talk, Dream Sex, Dreamsharing, First Kiss, First Time, Godstiel - Freeform, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pining, Porn with Feelings, Rough Sex, Sad Ending, Top!Cas, bottom!Dean, god!castiel - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-25
Updated: 2017-09-25
Packaged: 2019-01-05 03:16:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 32,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12181851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/secret_samadhi/pseuds/secret_samadhi
Summary: He couldn't resist, any more, this selfishness, this doomed call of his heart.A flutter of wings, and he descended from Heaven.And there was Dean.  He was raking leaves.  He was wearing jeans and a tshirt and a flannel and a jacket.**The 150 pages of pining, angst, and sex that ensued after Castiel watched Dean rake his leaves that we all deserve.***





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Burn, and Fall Again](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7117081) by [secret_samadhi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/secret_samadhi/pseuds/secret_samadhi). 



_Thirty notes in the mailbox_  
 _Will tell you that I’m coming home_  
 _And I think I’m gonna stick around_  
 _For awhile so you’re not alone_  
  
\--Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground, The White Stripes  
  
\---2011, after the defeat of Lucifer---

 

Castiel felt Dean’s…  _ longing. _

Like a prayer.

He ignored it, at first.  He thought:  maybe Dean’s longing for him was all caught up in, undifferentiable from, his longing for his brother, who had saved the world and been swallowed up by the earth.  It was only longing for Sam to be able to see him, see that he finally had the life they had said that they wanted.  Castiel was sure. Dean had a home, now, a family.  A child to take care of and take care of  _ right,  _ not out of necessity, not by shoplifting and turning tricks and going hungry.  A child to smile at, and teach to be a man.  A child who didn't have to be afraid of what was in his closet.  A woman who smiled at him, too, and didn’t know that he had sold his soul or that selling souls was even possible.  

That was the source of the longing, Castiel thought.  Just longing for Sam, really.  Not for Castiel.  Or if not only longing for Sam, if he could not convince himself it was only that, he thought:   maybe Dean’s longing was longing for the life he had  _ shared _ with Sam, so different from the one he was living now.  The life on the road.   _ Saving people, hunting things.   _ Castiel had been part of that.  For a little while, at least.  Maybe that was why he felt the call of Dean's longing.  Not because Dean was longing for Castiel, no.  Dean was not longing for Castiel.  He was only longing for the life that Castiel had been a part of.

Castiel told himself this.  He told himself this over, and over.  At first, he didn't even know it was a lie.

But Castiel felt Dean’s longing, and he felt something... wake, stir, in his own heart.  As he was not entirely sure what he felt from Dean, or why he felt it, he also wasn’t sure of what was in his heart, either.  He hadn’t ever had emotions other than  _ certainty, obedience.    _ He didn't know how to identify these others that were stirring.

He thought that maybe he was longing, too.  For Dean. His heart ached, sweetly.  All the time, but especially when he thought of Dean.  And whatever it was that he felt but could not identify, its intensity multiplied when he felt Dean’s longing calling back to him.  Dean's longing amplifying the nameless ache that he felt, too.  Longing calling to longing, he thought it could be, maybe.  Though he didn't know, for sure.  He didn’t even know how to know.

And even if he had… He didn’t know  _ how _ to long for Dean.  He didn’t know how to want something that he didn’t have.  He didn’t know how to think about living differently than he was living.  In Heaven.  Waiting for orders.  Waiting for the next feint, the inevitable next volley to arise out of Hell and need to be vanquished.  

How should he want, he wondered, each time he felt that hard sweet tug in his heart.  Should he think of green eyes, staring at him with all the longing of every dark night manifest there?  Should he think of touching Dean's face, gently, with his hands, his fingertips, over and over? Should he think of more?  Dean's lips??  Dean’s body, beneath his...  Should he dare, think of more?

He thought:  maybe it didn't matter, that he didn't know what to do.  

Because.

He thought:  maybe Dean was better off believing that Castiel was dead.  That maybe if Dean knew Castiel was alive, longing might turn to action, action that might ruin what Dean had built, put him in danger again, bring him back into the life.

Because the life was still there, and it still needed him.  Things still went bump in the night.  Heaven still schemed, and Hell still writhed like a snake with its head cut off.  There were still people to be saved.  There were still things to be hunted.

But no.  That was not for Dean, now, anymore, Castiel decided.  That would be cruel. That would be  _ selfish _ . Dean had lost so much already.  Castiel could let him be happy.  Castiel could do that much. Dean was happy now.  He was safe.  He was happy.  He  _ was,  _ Castiel told himself, in spite of the longing that never completely faded.  Castiel would not take away the sweetness, the comfort, that Dean had in his life now.  He would not replace it with hardness, and fear.  Violence.  The iron taste of blood.  He would not.  He would not, no matter what he decided he felt in his heart.   

But, still.  Dean  _ longed _ .

And Castiel ignored it.  He thought:  maybe it wasn’t really longing at all, but guilt that Castiel had died, and Dean hadn’t been able to save him.  Not longing, just guilt.  

He thought:  it would lessen, fade away, until it was nothing.  He thought:  Dean’s new family would fill up Dean's heart until there was no room left for Castiel, and this  _ longing _ .  

He thought: Dean would forgive himself.  

He thought:  Dean would forget him.  

He was wrong.  Dean's longing didn’t lessen.  It didn’t fade away.  It grew stronger.  Almost every day it grew stronger.  And in the nights, it was so strong it throbbed under Castiel's skin, and brought tears to Castiel’s eyes.  Castiel cried, silently, slowly, tears like rain water sliding clear and cold down a smooth glass window, silent as the wind tears leaves from trees on the other side.  And if he thought that Dean was crying too, if he imagined it, sensed it,  _ knew _ it somehow, some way, then he didn’t just cry silent, luminous, tears, that dropped like diamonds on the marble floors of Heaven.   He  _ wept _ .  Ugly and inconsolable and crumpled in on himself.  He doubled over, and his mouth opened wide and it  _ sobbed _ .   _ Dean.  Oh, Dean.  Oh, my charge.   _

Dean didn’t pray, not even when he cried.  Not once.  He didn’t call out Castiel's name, in hope, or in anguish.  Because he thought Castiel was dead, and Castiel didn’t allow him to find out otherwise.  He didn’t say the name,  _ Castiel _ , it wasn’t on his lips.  But it was in his heart.  It was in his heart, that  _ longed. _

Especially in the nights.  In the dark.  In his cool bed.  Comfortable.  Clean sheets, soft and new.  Safe.   _ Boring.   _ No hope for a lightning strike.  No hope at all, and it ate at Dean's heart, and he  _ longed,  _ stoic and stone faced, without ever saying a word.

Dean's longing didn’t lessen, no matter how many times Castiel told himself it would.  It called out to Castiel’s heart and Castiel’s heart called back and Castiel didn’t  _ understand.   _ He didn’t understand why his rib cage hurt, when no one was attacking him, and why the pain didn't heal.  He didn’t understand why his thoughts circled back and back and back to Dean.  He didn’t know what to do.  He didn’t know what was best.  He didn’t have any orders about Dean Winchester, any more.

He didn't have any orders.  He could choose.  

And he made the best choice he knew how.  He chose to ignore Dean's longing, and suffer the pain in his rib cage, and let it feel like he was being attacked, and let his thoughts meander down, down, in endless, deep, dark, pools, if it meant keeping Dean safe.  

He chose to ignore it, when Dean’s heart called out to his.  He wasn’t selfish.  He let Dean have his life.  His safe, comfortable life.  He didn’t ruin it.  He was sure, so sure, convinced, that that was the truest way to show his devotion.   _ Let Dean have his life.  Let him be free. _

A year passed, this way.  Dean  _ longing  _ and Castiel  _ hurting,  _ and  _ not understanding,  _ and,  _ ignoring _ .  And then it was a year, a whole year, since Dean had seen Castiel die, right in front of his eyes, a finger snap that turned  _ Castiel  _ into a cloud of blood and bone.

On Earth, Dean drank.  On Earth, Dean looked at the two photos he had of Cas, the first, recent, the family portrait, Bobby in a wheelchair, Ellen alive, everyone  _ alive _ .  He looked, and he drank.  And then, numbed from alcohol--because he couldn't have done it otherwise -- then he looked at the other photo.  The one from the future.  From Chitaqua.  The photo of the Cas that had followed him, even to the end of days.  Stubbled and dirty and carrying a gun, and squinting into the camera with steel flint eyes.  That Castiel had ‘liked him.’ But he had thrown himself at death, for the other-Dean there.  That Castiel had been tired and broken; he had been suicidal.   _ But at least he survived _ , Dean berated himself.   _ At least I saved him.  At least he was with me _ .   

On Earth, slumped to the too-clean floor of his too-clean kitchen, with his back against the too-clean island, Dean rubbed his hand against his jaw and his thumb against tear-lined eyes and he drank and he  _ longed _ .  

In Heaven, Castiel fell to his knees.  In Heaven, Castiel called out Dean's name.  In Heaven, Castiel clutched his heart.  It didn’t just ache any more, it  _ stabbed _ . It was so sharp.  Dean's longing called to him, it cried out, in the night.  It  _ wrenched  _ him, his heart, his grace, his incorporeal body, towards his aching, hurting,  _ longing  _ charge.  It was pulling his heart out of his chest, breaking his ribs, splintering them through his skin,  _ dragging  _ him towards Dean with fiery talons that he resisted, resisted.    

It hurt and it burned and it tore at him, it tore at him where he was weakest, in his heart.  Demanding that he go to his charge, who was calling, for him.  Who needed intercession.

But he could not go where he was called.  Not yet, though he cried.

Instead, on his knees, between breaths of “Dean,” and gasping sobs, he prayed to Anael.  He prayed to his sister, because he hurt; he prayed to his commander, because he didn’t know what to do.  Anael had told him what to do for so long, so long, in the garrison.  He could choose now, but maybe she would tell him what to do once again.  He needed help.  He… he  _ hurt _ so much.  

She heard his prayers, and she came to him, in Heaven.  

“Castiel,” she said, and looked at him with sad, wide, eyes.  “Oh, brother.  Oh, dear heart.  Oh sweet one.  Tell me why you’re hurting.” Though in truth she already knew.  The entire Host knew.  They felt the longing that did not have a name, too.  They cried, for their brother, or they clenched their teeth and tried to ignore it and hated Castiel, that he had this, that it had been given to him.  But they all knew.  The call was so strong.  It echoed, in the halls of Heaven, when Castiel's diamond tears shattered on the floor.

“Dean,” he said, just one word, and it quavered.  “He… I can feel him.  He needs me… He calls to me.  My charge, he calls.”  He was shaking.  

Anael wrapped her pure, white, wings around Castiel’s shoulders, and her soft skinned hands around his face.  Her wings were warm, and her hands cool.  And she so gentle, voice and touch.  “Why do you not go to him?”  All the Host wondered this.  Especially in the nights.  Many teardrops fell then.  So many.

Castiel gritted out his answer, jaw clenched, voice a misery, still on his knees, his head in Ana’s lap.  “He’s happy, now.  He’s safe.  He has what he’s always wanted.  I don’t want to… It would only be selfish, to go to him.  I don’t want to ruin it.   He already gave up so much, Ana, he gave up his mother, his father, his brother, he gave them all up for us.  I can’t take any more away from him, now.”  

Ana’s brow creased.  “He does not have what he wants, Castiel. Not  _ everything. _ ”  _ surely you can feel it.  Why do you deny it?   _  “Every one of the Host can feel it.  He  _ longs _ for you.  He calls out for you, through the firmament.  He needs  _ you _ .  You are hurting him, Castiel, brother.  Every second you are away.  You are hurting him.  To go to him now would not  _ take  _ from him, it would  _ give  _ him what he needs.”

Castiel shook his head.  “No.  It’s better if he thinks I’m dead.  It’s better if he doesn’t try… if he doesn’t call attention to himself.  It’s better this way.  I'm too… It's too dangerous.” He shook his head again.  “No. He will forgive himself.  He will forget.  It hurts now but in the long term… In the long term, it is better.  It is better.”  The repetition was not convincing, to him or to Ana, though it was meant to be.  Instead it sounded like what it was.  Desperation.  Desperation for Dean's longing to be something other than what it patently was.  

Anael stroked Castiel’s hair, and closed her eyes in sadness for her brother and his pure heart, bound to break.  “He is mortal, Castiel.  What if he does not forgive?  What if he does not forget?  What if he dies, and you never went to him.  What if he dies, and you never…what if he dies with his heart still sore from this longing, because you never eased it?”

Castiel sniffled, and tried to take a brave breath, make his voice strong when it tried to only whisper.  “Then he dies.  With no evil threatening him.  With no angels trying to force themselves into his body.  He dies without having to be party to Heaven’s schemes, and Hell’s destruction.  He dies free.”  Castiel did not sound brave.  He sounded like he was asking a question.

_ Oh, pure heart,  _ Ana thought.   _ Oh, my sweet brother.   _ “You don’t believe that, Castiel.  You don’t-- tell me you don’t believe that.  Tell me you understand, what there is between you and Dean.  What there could be.  Tell me you understand what it’s worth, what it means.”  Privately, she thought that he did understand.  She thought that he understood, and that his human did too, but that they were  _ afraid _ .  And it surprised her, because Castiel was the bravest of all her brothers.  He had faced such evils.  Faced them and been strong, and true, and had not flinched.  Fought such battles, and emerged, unburnt, unshaken, always pure.

But this… Gabriel said that this was different.  That in this, Castiel did not know how to be brave.  Maybe because of their Father.  Castiel had only known heartbreak, when he had tried to love.  That was true of all of the angels, really, and they all dealt with it differently.  Gabriel himself by hiding behind a persona of utter flippancy.  Ana by Falling.  Balthazar by drowning his sorrows in over indulgence.  Zachariah and Uriel by snuffing out every mote of joy in their souls and becoming smug automatons.  And Castiel… Castiel by being afraid to love like that again.

Gabriel was such an asshole, Ana did not want want to believe he was right, about anything.  Though maybe he was, just this once..  Maybe he understood  _ this _ .  Maybe, she thought, as she held Castiel and waited for his reply.

“Ana,” tears flowed freely from Castiel’s eyes, and his face crumpled in complete devastation until it was only a shell of hurt.  “I can’t.  I just… he thinks I’m dead.  I can’t.  I don't know  _ how _ .”  

_ How do I help him?   _ Ana asked herself.   _ How do I help him be brave?  _ “He is not happy, Castiel.” Her tone so gentle, so kind.  But the words like a slap in the face.

And like he was slapped, Castiel recoiled.  He knew it was true:  Dean was  _ not  _ happy.  Dean’s longing was  _ not  _ fading away.  No matter how sure Castiel was that it would, or how long he waited.  And that  _ mattered.   _ It  _ mattered  _ to Castiel, if Dean really was  _ not  _ happy.  “Sister… I don't… I don't know what to do.  I don't know how….”

_ Yes you do, Castiel.  You know what to do.  You are only afraid.   _ “Ssshhh, I know, sweet one.  I know, dear heart.  You will find the way.  His longing, the way it calls-- it will show you the way.  You will not be able to deny it.  It will not be like this forever.”

But Castiel didn't believe her.  He didn't, he  _ couldn't,  _ because he hurt so much,  _ so much,  _ right then, and he didn't know what to do to make it better, and regardless of Ana’s words he couldn't even begin to imagine the way.  It couldn't be as easy as just going to Dean, revealing himself, taking him into his arms, could it?  That seemed too easy.  Too selfish. It couldn't be that way.  Whatever way there was, or might be, for him to ease Dean's longing, and his own, it would be hard, he knew.  Too hard, probably.  That way would ask too much of them.  He was sure.  It was never easy, for him and Dean.  And this…. To bring their hearts together, so they didn't have to ache?  It would be too good, too valuable.  It would have to cost too much.  It could not be easy, to win Dean’s heart.  So beautiful, so brave… it could not be easy.  It would have to be impossible.  It would  _ have  _ to be. To win something that rare, that precious.  That is what Castiel believed.  Not Ana’s soft words.  

So he sobbed in Ana’s arms, until he couldn’t sob any more, and she held him, and stroked his hair, and whispered “Oh Castiel. Dear Castiel. Sweet Castiel.  It will be alright.  You will find him. You will find him.”

So good, so loving, his sister, Castiel thought, in moments when Dean’s longing ebbed and he could think at all.  She was as the angels should have been.  Full of love, and wonder.  No surprise, then, that she had not wanted to stay among them, when she saw what they became.

And Ana, for her part, thought much the same of Castiel as she held his head in her lap.  That here was an angel as they should all have been, an angel that made her proud.  Here was an angel who knew how to love, to be made of love, to show devotion.  She hoped that she could learn, to be like Castiel.  And she hoped that he could find happiness, that he would follow his perfect heart, and that it would lead him to what he deserved with his charge.    

Castiel was only able to stop crying when it was morning on Earth, and Dean’s longing receded.  He stood on two feet finally, in the morning, and embraced his sister and thanked her for her solace.  She nodded, and looked at him with wide, kind, eyes.

Castiel went next into the Garden, into meditation, and he closed his tired, reddened eyes and listened to the sounds of Paradise, and found a short-lived peace.  The grass there was green and soft between his toes, and the sky blue, and the bees buzzed on Castiel's shoulders when he had been still long enough that they did not fear him.  He listened to the bees.  He knew their song.  They sang of nectar on petals, and fresh grass, and the health of the queen.  Their song was simple, and sweet, and it eased his aching heart.

It eased his aching heart for a while.  But Dean’s longing came again.  Like always, sure as the slow drip of honey in the comb, it came again, and it was so strong that, even in the Garden, even in the heart of light and peace, it found Castiel, and pierced his heart once more. It found Castiel, and as he clenched his chest, and the bees startled and left him, he remembered Anael’s sweet voice, full of such sorrow, telling him, “He is not happy, Castiel.”  

And he knew it was true.  He could not deny it, any more, now that it had taken words, been spoken out loud.  Dean had a good life, a safe life, a life he thought he wanted.  But he wasn’t happy.  He  _ longed _ for Castiel.

So Castiel went to him.   _ Finally,  _ Castiel went to him.  He hid himself, but he went to him.  He had to.  He couldn't resist, any more, this selfishness, this doomed call of his heart.

A flutter of wings, and he descended from Heaven.  

And there was Dean.  He was raking leaves.  He was wearing jeans and a tshirt and a flannel and a jacket.  

Castiel couldn't breathe, when he saw him.  Had Dean always been this beautiful?  Had Castiel's heart always beat so hard, when he saw him.   _ Yes,  _ his heart said.   _ Yes,  _ his eyes said.   _ Yes.  Yes.  Yes.  Since the first time.  Since the very first time.  You laid your hand upon him in Hell and you were lost.   _

The sun was on Dean's face, golden-bright in his hair, and Castiel could not breathe.  He didn’t even need oxygen, in this form, and still he felt breathless, light headed, unsteady.

Dean's face wasn’t happy, or sad, as he raked the leaves in his yard into a pile.  It was just thoughtful.  He could have been thinking about anything.  If his neighbors had walked by, they could have imagined he was thinking about replacing the loose shingle on the roof, or whether the Bears would win this weekend against the Saints, or whether he was going to need to mow the lawn again this year before the frost came.  

He  _ could  _ have been thinking of any of those things.  But he was not.  Castiel knew.  It was clear as the autumn sun what Dean was thinking of, this close to the throb of his longing.  He was thinking of Castiel.  He was thinking of blue eyes, and dark hair. He was thinking of how Castiel had rebelled. He was thinking of how brave Castiel was. He was thinking of how Castiel had thrown a fire bomb at Lucifer, at the devil himself, knowing that he would die.  How he was  _ so  _ brave.  How no one should be that brave.  

Castiel had gone to Thrull knowing he was going to die.  He had known that and he had gone anyway.  Brave angel.  So beautiful…  And Castiel had said it was for ‘humanity’, he had said it was for ‘free will’, he had said that this was how he thought he should best carry the flag of Heaven, and do the work of the Father.  But Dean knew that was all crap.  He knew it.  He didn't want to know it, but he did.  Castiel had done it, all of it, for him.  Castiel had told him that, too, in as many words. Castiel had done it for him.  Castiel had given up  _ everything _ , he had  _ ended himself _ for Dean, and Dean alone of all God's creations.

And why?  And what was Dean worth?  Dean asked himself this, raking leaves, the same few stragglers that avoided his rake over and over, not really trying to catch them, just going through the motions, just wasting time, chewing his lip, thinking this all over, not for the first time.  What was he worth?  Really.  He was just some guy, nothing special about him, nothing at all, here he was with a rake and a yard and one of the angels of Heaven was gone now, gone forever, because of him.  Because Dean had  _ ruined _ him.  That was the truth, inescapable.  Beautiful, true, fierce, and pure, and Dean had  _ ruined  _ him.  Cut him off from the Host, brought him low, got him killed.  The most beautiful… And Dean had  _ ruined  _ him.  

Tears leaked down Castiel’s face as he watched, and heard this eulogy play itself in Dean’s mind.   _ Oh no, Dean.  Oh no no no no. _

Then Castiel's heart stopped in his chest, and his hand had to clutch there, to check that he was still corporeal, that his body, gone numb, hadn't dissipated from the plane.  Because next Dean started to wish that he could have died in Castiel's place.  To  _ long  _ for that, the absolute release of death.  He would have done it.  Taken Castiel's place.  Gladly.  He still would.  If offered the choice, if he could give himself up, and bring Castiel back, he would do it in a heartbeat, and never look back, no matter where the hellhounds took him and what he found when he got there.  It would be an easy trade.  An obvious one.  Just Dean, just a worthless mortal, bound to die and go to Hell in a handful of years anyway, instead of the bravest, the purest, the  _ most beautiful... _ it would be no trade at all.  

_ No, Dean, my charge, oh, no.  Not you for me.  Never.   _ Castiel still clutched himself in horror, but Dean couldn't see him, and so he continued his maudlin thoughts, unaware in his melancholy.    

While Castiel watched him, heart stopped, eyes wet, invisible, Dean raked his leaves and wished that he could have held Castiel in his arms, one time, just one time. Wished that he could have known what it felt like, to kiss Castiel, and know the taste of his lips.  He thought they would taste like electricity, like putting a battery on your tongue.  He doesn’t know if Castiel ever wished for that too, and he wonders.  There were a couple of times when he thought maybe, maybe… There was that flash, sometimes, in Castiel's eyes… But it was never the right time.  Or he never let it be the right time.  And he'll never know, now, he’s alive and Castiel’s dead and He'll never know whether Castiel would have...And Castiel will never know, now much Dean  _ wanted.. _ .   And  _ longing  _ pulses from his chest.   _ This  _ is the longing.  There is no escaping it now.  No confusing it for guilt or nostalgia.   _ This  _ is how Dean longs for Castiel, in the nights.   _ This,  _ is what Castiel feels, answering in his heart.

_ Dean.   _

Castiel still stands hidden behind Dean, unmoving, with tears running steady down his face.   _ Oh Dean. _ _ Yes.  I did wish for that.  For your kiss.  For your arms around me… I wished for that with my whole heart.  I wished for that so hard it hurt and so often that I could not count the number.  I rebelled, for that.  I was ready to Fall, for that.   _ **_Anything_ ** _ , for that.   _ But... he never knew Dean… yes he  _ wanted _ , and yes he, too, would look into Dean’s eyes and think  _ maybe _ , but he never… even the night that Ana held him and the longing was so strong his heart felt like it was pierced with a knife, he never hoped for  _ this.   _ That Dean… His heart...

He could have appeared to Dean, then, and given him the kiss they both wished for; he could have held Dean in his arms and kissed him on his lips and they could have floated a hundred feet in the air, heady, dizzy, risen on Castiel’s wings until the sun was too hot on their skin.

But he didn’t.  He didn’t.  That would be too rash, that would be too much, that would be too soon.  He had only come here to see, for himself.  To see, and hope maybe that he would see that Dean was happy, that Anael was wrong, that Dean was doing fine and that his  _ longing  _ for Castiel was only a memory, a habit, only lingering, only a candle sure to soon go out.  

Anael was not wrong.  Castiel was wrong.  So, so wrong.  Dean was not happy.  Dean was not thinking about whether or not he would have to mow the lawn again this fall.  Dean was thinking about how he and Castiel had never had the chance he would have wanted for them, and about how he wishes he were dead in Castiel’s place.  And this wish is not a candle, it is not going out.  This wish is a fire, and it blackens and destroys.  

It is destroying Dean.  Slowly, one little inch of his soul every day, every night, it destroys, but it is taking what was once so bright and turning it black with regret.

Castiel can’t bear it.  He cannot  _ bear  _ to see that happening to Dean, and know it's his fault, and do nothing.  So though it is a bad idea, though it is not what he promised himself when he decided to come here and watch, only watch, and though he knows that it will only lead to more serious infractions, he acts.  

He releases a part of himself, a wisp of his grace, of his  _ own _ longing-- now certain that that is what he feels, in his poor, battered, heart-- and he lets it go to Dean.  He lets it grow in the green grass at Dean’s feet and turn the pigment in the few last leaves Dean is raking just a little bit redder.  

The world seems more beautiful to Dean, for that moment, before Castiel’s grace fades.  The world seems just a little more beautiful, and his longing eases.  

Castiel smiles, and goes back to Heaven.  Thinking he made it better.  

He was wrong again. He did not make it better

When night falls on Earth, Dean is sitting on his porch, staring at the stars with a beer in his hand.  He raises the beer to his mouth, and thinks about how beautiful the world was that afternoon, how red the leaves, how green the grass, and how beautiful it should be now, the night, and the stars, but how instead the sky just seems gray and dim as ash.  

His longing returns, stronger than it was before, so strong that it knocks Castiel off his feet, where he stands in Heaven’s library, trying to put a book back on its shelf.  The book falls, pages fluttering, to the floor. Castiel can't move to pick it up.  He is frozen by Dean's longing.  It is so strong.

It is so strong that Gabriel manifests at Castiel’s side, and smacks him on the back of the head.  “Make it stop, dumb fuck,” he says, “I can’t fucking sleep up here because your boyfriend’s pining for you so hard.  Make it stop.”

“Gabriel--”

Gabriel interrupts him, pointing a finger at Castiel’s face and narrowing his eyes.  “Make.  It.  Stop.”  

And then he disappears again, leaving Castiel alone in a library row that stretches on forever in either direction, “How?” formed but not spoken on his lips.  And normally Castiel loves the library, loves how it is quiet and calm, but now it seems sad.  It seems so empty.  The rows go on forever, but there is nothing in them.  Certainly not green eyes.  Certainly not freckles.  

He leaves the book.  He goes to Dean.  He sits by him, again invisible, on the porch, on the swing that hangs there, careful not to let it sway, or creak, under his weight.  He goes to Dean and he releases some of his grace into the night sky.  Another infraction.  Not the last, he knows now.  It will not be the last.  

Dean experiences it as a cloud dispersing, so that all of a sudden he can see all the stars in the sky.  So many stars, and the night doesn’t even seem dark, any more.  It is violet, amethyst, moon-bright.  It is the whole universe, and it is alive.

Dean sips his beer, and his hand reaches out, toward the porch swing.  He doesn’t realize he’s doing it until it’s already done, and then he shakes his head.  There’s no one on the porch swing.  He’s alone.  There’s no one on the porch swing.  No one with blue eyes.  No one with chapped lips.  There’s no one.  

The stars cloud over again.  The sky goes dark.  The porch swing sways, as if someone has stood up and left.  But there is no one.  Dean is alone.


	2. Chapter 2

Castiel didn’t wait a year before he went to Dean again.  He couldn’t have, if he had wanted to.  Anael was right.  His heart was showing him the way.

He waited a week.  

Dean’s longing was stronger in the nights, so strong.  Castiel didn’t know why.  The six nights he bore it, alone in Heaven, he wondered if Dean laid awake in bed and cried, silently.  He wondered if Dean waited until his family was asleep and then drank, too much.  He wondered if Dean wiped the fog off the mirror after his evening shower and stood, in slowly coiling steam, looking at himself through the mirror, darkly.

For six nights, Castiel wondered.

On the seventh night, a Thursday, Castiel went to him.  

Dean was not lying awake in bed, crying silently.  He was not in the kitchen, or out on the porch, drinking too much.  He was not staring at his mirror.  He was asleep.  He was tossing, and turning.  

He was dreaming.

Castiel did not have to enter the dream to know what it was about.  It was clear as if it were Castiel’s own dream.  So close to Dean, the dream  _ called  _ to him.  

Dean dreamt of the few seconds before Lucifer killed Castiel at Thrull.  The few seconds before Castiel exploded in rank carnage.  It was that few seconds, over, and over, and over again.  And the worst part for Dean, the worst for Dean each time, was not when Castiel erupted.  It was the moment before.  The moment before when he thought:

_ I could still save him. _

_ I could distract Lucifer. _

_ I could get between them, somehow. _

_ I could banish all the angels. _

_ I could freeze time. _

_ I could take his place _

_ I could say goodbye. _

_ I could love him better. _

And then, before he can act, before he can even circle all the way through the list of ways he could protect Cas, the things he should say, the ways he could be better:  blood in the air.

_ And now he’ll never know _ .

And falling.  And heartbreak.  

Over, and over, and over.

Tears leak silently down Castiel’s face, again.  His face is wet all the time, now, it seems.  The cuffs of his trenchcoat are stiff and crystalline with salt, from drying his eyes so often.   _ Oh Dean.  Oh my charge.  That you cry, not knowing: that you are my hero.  That you could not have saved me. _

Castiel reaches out towards Dean’s shaking body, from where he is standing, invisible, in the shadows in the corner of the room.  He reaches out two fingers, but does not touch.  He reaches out two fingers, and lets another wisp of grace go to Dean.  Another infraction.  A bigger one, because this time he does not send his grace into the Earth, or the sky.  He sends it into Dean.  His grace envelops Dean, covers him, glows bright blue and then sinks inside him.  Dean stops tossing and turning immediately.  

His dream changes, too.  Now he is lying in a field.  It is not drab and browned and dead like the field in Thrull.  It is much like the Garden.  Grass is green and sky is cloudless, and blue.  A soft breeze whispers in the grass, and Dean runs his fingers through the blades and they feel so clean.  He feels clean, too.  He doesn't feel all the blood that should be on him.  He doesn't feel the dirt, that never washes away, no matter how hard he scrubs.  His skin just feels the sun, warm and yellow and bright.  No shadows in this field, only sun, nowhere a monster could hide.  Safe, it is safe in this field, he knows.  He does not have to fear.  He likes it, here.   

And best of all:  Whenever he blinks he sees blue eyes.  They should make him sad, those blue eyes; usually they make him sad, these days, because they are not real, and because they are gone and because he failed them.  But in this dream, they are real.  They are not far away.  They are so close, and they are warm, and full of love.  They are watching over him.  They  _ know  _ him.  They  _ love _ him.  They are alive.  They will live forever, here.  Forever crystal and perfect and pure and free of pain.  Dean can see that, he can see all of that, every time he blinks, and it makes him feel so light.   

His fingers pluck the grass.  They find a dandelion, and he plucks that too, and brings it to his lips.  He blows a gentle breath and watches the seeds float away on the breeze.   _I wish for this_ , he dreams.   _Blue skies and blue eyes_ _and sunshine._

He closes his eyes in the field and sleeps easy, for the rest of the night.  But in the morning, his heart feels sore.  A muscle that worked too much.  In the morning, he looks out the window of his kitchen while his family bustles around him, and he looks up at the fall sky and it is blue, and cloudless, but when he blinks he does not see blue eyes.   And he  _ longs.   _

 

_ ***** _

 

Five days.  Castiel waits five days, and then he is back in the shadows of Dean’s room as Dean shivers and spasms in his sleep, and whispers, forlorn “No.  No.” 

Five nights and Dean is dreaming of blue eyes again, but they are far away, they are blurring as they recede into the distance.  They are cold.

They don't know him.

They are lined with tears.   

They are full of pain.

Are they real, Dean wonders?  Those eyes, are they full of pain right now, in Hell somewhere?  Because of him?  Is his ang-- is  _ Castiel _ on some horned, screeching, demon's rack, being cut and sliced until his pure, perfect eyes leak tears and he screams out, in his pain?  Does he scream out for Dean?  For comfort, or in blame?  

The dream shifts as soon as Dean thinks this, zooms back, too fast, and then forward, too fast, and then-- there.   _No, no._ There is the Pit _._ There are the racks, Dean remembers them, he will never forget. And there is Castiel:  hands shackled high above his head to a worn, splintered, blood stained plank, arms and legs stretched out and straining.  His eyes are red-rimmed and full of tears.  His body is slumped, exhausted, but still tense with pain.  He is damp with sweat, pale from the loss of the blood that seeps from the many cuts on his face, his chest, his arms.

The cuts run deep.

A demon -- a hulking, bulging, bat-winged  _ thing _ \-- licks Castiel's face with its black, forked tongue, tastes the salt of Castiel’s sweat there.  It is bitter.  It tastes like pain, and fear.  The demon likes it, and laps again, talon rising up to press its point into Castiel's chin and hold his face still so it can taste him again, and again.  

_ No -- you motherfucker, no _ .   _ Cas... _

Licking its decaying lips to chase the taste of Castiel, the demon runs its yellow fingernails, long, pointed, down Castiel's pale chest.  Castiel flinches from every touch, but that only makes the demon smile its sharp toothed smile, because Castiel cannot escape, he can only flinch and cringe and be hurt.  The demon is naked, and its huge, veined cock is erect, head butting up against Castiel's thighs, his stomach.

_ Don't touch him, please, please... _

But the demon doesn't hear Dean.  Dean is not there, to save Castiel from this.   Unhurried, the demon smiles, and slides his claws between the cuts and rivulets of blood marring Castiel's chest, until he finds a place he likes, a place that is unmarked.  Then he cuts there.  He cuts in hard, deep, with a razor blade, and then Dean can only see Castiel's eyes again, dark with pain, just his eyes, as he cries out,  _ Dean. _

_ “ _ No. Cas, No,” he cries softly into his pillow.  “No.”

Back in the shadowed corner of Dean's bedroom, tears leak from Castiel's eyes, and he so wants to appear to Dean, and take him into his arms.  Fill the room with light and whisper into his ear “It's alright Dean.  I'm here.  It's OK.  That's not real.  It's not real.  It never was.  It never will be.  I'm here, with you.  Always, with you.”

The desire to go to Dean is so strong that Castiel’s body shifts, and becomes just a little more corporeal, enough to stir the air, before he can stop himself.  

He can't do that.  He  _ can't _ .  He's not ready.  That's not why he's here.  That's not what's best, for Dean.

Lies.  Papering over a desperate fear.  But enough to stop him from going to Dean embodied.  This time.

Instead, Castiel reaches out towards Dean.  With his whole hand, this time, palm first.  He reaches out and his palm glows with grace that then ripples through the air like satin and covers Dean’s body as it did before, and pulses once before sinking into him.  More grace, than the last times.  A bigger infraction, if Castiel is going to continue to think of his interactions with Dean like that.  

Enough grace for Castiel to enter the dream.

And there, Castiel breaks free of his shackles.  They are nothing.  He is power, he is the light.  He is an angel of the Lord, and he cannot be contained.  He burns with a pure, white, radiance that leaks from all his cuts and heals them.  It is so bright, it is so sharp, Castiel's light:  it blinds the demon that hurt him and it staggers back, hissing in pain, dropping to its knees with its hands covering its smouldering eyes.

“Mercy,” it hisses, craven, but Castiel will show it none.  His face is cold and fierce, his eyes are ice.  He is a creature of perfect judgement, cruel and beautiful and hard as marble.  He is the justice of the Lord God, he is inevitable, inescapable, always.

He alights from the rack, and the arch of his bare foot is perfect, Dean thinks.  Every part of him is perfect.  Every inch of his skin, every contour of his body, every shade of light that colors him pale and crimson, black and sapphire.  Dean is fascinated as with each step he takes on those perfect feet, each step toward his demon foe, his wings emerge into this plane from behind him.  They are black, lustrous, oiled and lush and gleaming in the flickering red light of the Pit.  They are strong, they are spread wide.  The are the radius of lightning, of the power crackling around Castiel as he advances.

His eyes flash.  He steps forward to where the demon now kneels, abject, in front of him, and touches his palm to the demon’s head.  “Mercy,” it begs again, hopeless, on a voiceless breath.  

Castiel smites it to ashes in a single fission of holy light.

And then he flies.  The corpse is still smoking, still slumping to the ground when Castiel turns and takes wing.  Dean watches him rise above the rack, rise up into the smoke and ash of the Pit, a bright firefly in the darkness, and just when Dean can’t see him anymore, just when he flies too high and vanishes, the dream changes.  Zoom, zoom.  

Now Dean is lying in the Garden again.  The racks are gone, the dark is gone, the screams are gone.  The flickering shadows, gone.  Here, the grass is soft under his back, and tickles his neck where it is bare.  Flowers have grown in around his place on the ground, since last he was here, indigo shaded forget-me-nots, and they lean heavy-petaled over him, brushing his chest and casting long-fingered shadows.  Their scent is light and floral and surrounds him in a delicate cloud.  

The sun is bright, as before, as always in the Garden, and Dean shades his eyes as he lies on his back, because there is something in the air above him, and he is trying to see it through the glare.  A tiny, black figure, at first, just a shadow, but he is not afraid.  There is no fear, here.

It spirals down towards him.  A human body and wings.  Downward, downward, a new detail revealing itself with every circle down.  Black hair.  Pale, bare, chest.  A white garment wrapped low around its hips, covering its legs.  Banded in gold, at the waist, and again around lean, muscled, arms.  A halo.  

And finally, as the figure lands beside him, so gently it barely even bends the grass:  blue eyes.  

“Cas,” he whispers, voice breaking, and he reaches out with both arms, desperate in this gesture but not caring how he seems.  He never sees Castiel in his dreams, anymore.  Only in nightmares.  Only on the rack, only exploding in the cemetery in Thrull.  Only in pain.

“Hello, Dean,” Castiel replies, and his voice is so deep.  It is still just the way Dean remembers it.  He did not forget.  He has not forgotten.  He did not exaggerate it, in his longing, in his sorrow.  Castiel’s voice is still gravel and Dean can still feel in his chest.  In his sore heart.

“Are you--”  _ real?  OK?  Alive?  Here?   _ He doesn't finish his question.  Castiel puts a finger to his lips, a long, beautiful finger, and reaches out to take his face, so gently, in his other hand, and look at him with wide eyes.  

Castiel tilts his head, and looks at him with eyes deep as ancient wishing wells and as full of longing, but he doesn't say another word.  

Somehow Dean understands that he  _ can't _ .  That that is the rule of this dream. Castiel is with him, but not all with him.  Not enough to talk.  Only see, and touch.  

He understands, as Castiel guides Dean's head back down to rest in the grass, and pillows it there in his hand, fingers combing into the strands of Dean's hair.  As Castiel turns on his side and starts drawing patterns over the tshirt covering Dean’s stomach.  He understands what this Castiel does not --cannot -- say.   _ I’m here.  I’ll watch over you.”   _ Watch, and touch, but not talk.  Watch, and touch, only.  It will be enough.  It is so much more than he thought he would ever… It means so much.  It will be enough.

Dean turns his head, to look at Castiel, to look at his eyes.  To see them here, in this place, to see them in the light, to see them warm and close and so full of… so full of….  Dean stutters, even within himself, safe, in the dream, he stutters.  But the sun still shines down.

Dean gets sleepy in the sun, and the sweet scent, his guard down, safe, staring into those eyes.  His own eyes slip shut, slowly, eventually, but those blue eyes don't even blink, not once.  In the morning, when Dean wakes, he is sure, they didn’t even blink once.

Of course it wasn't enough.  


	3. Chapter 3

Three days.  Dean dreamt of the field every night, and the tone of his longing changed.  It wasn’t so  _ hopeless _ .  It wasn’t so  _ distraught _ .  It wasn’t only guilt, and heartbreak, and the fear of being broken hearted forever.  Now he remembered what Castiel’s eyes looked like, when they were not full of pain.  Now he knew what it felt like, to lie in a field, with Castiel next to him, safe, whole, drawing on his stomach, watching over him.  He knew that it felt  _ good,  _ that he could feel good again, that it was possible.  Even if just in dreams.  

He wished he could dream that dream forever.  

He wished he never had to wake up with a sore heart.

For three nights after Castiel visited he dreamt of the field, but he was alone there.  Each night he lay with his hands laced behind his head, a piece of grass in his mouth, waiting for an angel to appear in the corona of the sun, and come to him.  Each night wishing that he had never told Castiel not to watch over him.  That he had never said it was creepy.  That he had let Castiel watch over him every single night.  Because now Castiel couldn’t watch over him, any more.  Now, only in dreams.  

He lay alone in the field and he  _ longed _ .  He didn’t understand why his brain would dream him the same field, but not bring him Castiel.  He didn’t understand why when he blinked he only saw the dark backs of his eyelids.  He didn’t understand, and he dreamed and he longed for three days and three nights.

Three days, and three nights, until Castiel came again.  Spiraled down out of the sky like the sun god coming to claim his tribute:  the bravest, most beautiful, the brightest and purest of his worshippers.  Light glinting off his halo and off the gold banded around his body in bright, sharp, flashes.  Soaring on the air currents, wings spread wide.  Strong, and sure. But always downward, downward.  To Dean.

Castiel landed gently with feet that sunk deep into the bed of flowers growing tall and fragrant now in Dean's bower.  The petals kissed Castiel’s ankles, so softly, and Dean wished that he could kiss those ankles with his lips, instead.  He would kiss them even more softly than the petals, he thought.  He would kiss them over and over, just there.  His lips would linger, and his eyes would slip closed, and he would kiss...

“Dean,” Castiel said, as Dean stared at Castiel’s feet, lost in softness, to bring Dean’s attention back to his eyes.  Blue eyes.  One word and one word only was spoken-- _Dean_ \--and when Dean opened his mouth to add more words-- _Cas.  Are you real?  Are you here?  Are you alive?  I miss you, so much.  I need you, so much.  I'm sorry.  I'm so, so, so sorry--_ Castiel’s fingers were there again, pressed gentle against his lips.  The rule of the dream. The same rule, as before.  

This was the rule that Castiel had decided, the new wall between them, now that he had smashed through the old one (Don’t go to him.  Don’t see him.  Ignore him.  Ignore his  _ longing.   _ Stay away).  This was the new rule, because Castiel was  _ afraid _ to talk to Dean.  Afraid Dean would be able to tell he was real, not only dreamt of.  Afraid he would confess too much.   _ Dean.  I'm here.  It's me, it's really me.  The Father brought me back.  He brought me back and gave me to you, my charge, to protect, only you, forever.  I love you, Dean.  I will watch over you, always.  I will keep you safe.  I will stand by you come what may. I love you, Dean.  With everything, I love you, my hero, my heart.  Let me keep you.  Please, let me keep you beside me.  Let me touch you, let me hold you close, safe in my arms; let me show you, please.  Anything.  Please.  I love you. _

A confession like that would be… too risky.  Too terrifying.  Too fraught.  It could ruin the comfort and safety Dean had found, that Castiel still wanted to protect.  Above all else.  Above the needs of Heaven.  Above his own needs.  So he had decided on this new rule, of silence, and so he did not speak.  Instead, he touched his first two fingertips to Dean’s lips, while he looked into Dean’s eyes, and begged.  Silently.   _ Don’t talk.  Don’t.  I can’t _ .

Dean understood.  He understood that dreams could have rules.  He understood needing to say so much that he couldn’t say anything at all.  He understood being afraid, of words.  He understood that he never got what he wanted.  So he nodded his head, fractionally.  

Castiel’s fingertips lingered on his lips as his head moved and he felt just the smallest drag there, the smallest tug of ivory skin against chapped lips.  

_ Mmmmmm _ , Dean thought.   _ That touch.  That… lingering.  That is not forbidden.  What else…? _  And slowly, like the ice age, holding Castiel's eyes with his own and braced for any sign of rejection, denial, he took Castiel’s first finger from where it rested against his lips, into his mouth, up to the first knuckle, and touched his teeth and tongue to it, just.  

Castiel did not move.  He sat, still as the Father's throne in Heaven.  Breath held.  He did not move.

_ This is not forbidden,  _ Dean understood, still testing the limits of the dream.   _ What else.  What else can we have, here?  What else can I have, in this place beyond death, to make my heart ache in the morning? _

He released Castiel's first finger and took his second, scraped teeth against it and tongued it just the same.  He never took his eyes off of Castiel’s.  He watched them so carefully, to see if they would close off, narrow, back away.  

They did not close off.  The did not narrow.  They did not back away. There was nothing forbidden, in them.  Nothing.  Dean's whole body shivered, when he saw that permission dark and deep there, and he kept holding Castiel's gaze tight, kept holding those eyes with his own to make sure, completely sure.

He was sure.  Castiel's eyes forbade him nothing.  Nothing at all that was his heart's desire.  They widened, as Dean held that second finger in his mouth.  They darkened with lust.  They hovered in closer, just a little bit closer.  They were fascinated, by the feeling of Dean’s tongue.  And they forbade him  _ nothing.   _

_ Is this how Cas would have looked at me, if I had touched him, before?  Or is it only the dream?  _ Dean asked himself.   _ Is it only what I want, not what is real, not what would have been?   _ He would never know, he thought.  He would never know if Castiel's eyes would really have widened like that, if Dean had taken his fingers into his mouth and tongued them, on Earth.

Dean did not know that this  _ was  _ real.  That Castiel's eyes  _ were  _ widening, and darkening with lust.  That the moment was endangering Castiel's rule.  Because Castiel felt Dean's pulse of  _ longing  _ (for more, always more) _ ,  _ of  _ regret _ (for having missed this chance so many times, when Cas was alive) _ ,  _ of,  _ questioning ( _ not knowing whether Castiel would have wanted this, or even whether it was ok now _ ),  _ and he wanted to answer him,  _ Dean, yes, of course, yes, always yes,  _ but he did not have his words, and he was afraid to bring them to bear.  So, so, afraid, of what they might reveal, what damage they might wreak.  And so he could only pray them, silently, and suffer Dean's doubt.

So he suffered.  He suffered Dean's uncertainty in what should have been certain, and he suffered his own profound regret.  Regret that wrapped around his heart, and ached, and drowned him deep.  Regret because, oh… Castiel had never known Dean’s  _ tongue _ before.  Tongue now touched lightly to his index and middle finger; it had never touched any part of him, before.  Never for real, only in secret dreams that were only dim shadows, of this.  

And why not?  Why had he never allowed it?  Why had he not  _ demanded  _ this, come to Dean crackling with power and forced Dean to his knees and  _ required  _ this of him?  Why had he not thrown himself at Dean’s feet and  _ begged  _ for it?  He would have.  He would have begged.  If he had known… If he had known that it felt like this when Dean’s tongue touched his body, he would have begged.

Why why why, why not until now?  _ Why,  _ he thought on every breath pulled down hard to his drowning lungs as he felt like he was going to die, suffocate on his own longing  just from the feel of Dean's tongue on his two fingers, on their tips.   _ Why. _

Where else could that tongue, that hot, soft, tongue, touch, and what would it feel like there?

Cas shivered, imagining. He shivered, in Dean's mouth.  Dean's tongue wet on his neck.  On his chest, rough on his nipples, his hips, the line of bone there.  Between his toes.  Lapping at the soles of his feet.  In the crease of his crotch, moist and humid.  On his cock.  Wrapped all around it.  Dean held slave, his tongue on Castiel's body forever.

Dean felt the response of Castiel's body _._ Felt the vibration against his tongue. _So innocent.  My Cas,_ he thought. _My angel.  So shivery, silvery, sparkling, for me.  Gonna show him what it can be.  Gonna show him what it can mean.  Gonna make him feel so good._ That thought felt warm within Dean, in his stomach, warm and joyful.  That he could make Castiel feel good.  That Castiel would let him.  Even if it was only in a dream. That he could make up in the fields of his imagination for how he had failed his angel in life.  

Still staring directly into Castiel's eyes, hopeful, penitent, Dean released Castiel’s second finger, dipped his chin, and took both fingers into his mouth at once.

Castiel gasped.  A single, sharp, inhale.  If this body had a voice, in the dream, it would have  _ moaned. _

This time, Dean did not only touch, not only just the first knuckle, not only dry and delicate.  This time he took both fingers entirely into his mouth, as deep as he could, until they knocked at the back of his throat; he took them all.  He took them and made them wet and slick with his saliva, hot with the heat of his mouth.  He wrapped his lips around them and he sucked, heavy and humid, and he rolled his tongue, around, and around, and between and around.  Making them slicker.  Wetter.  Hotter.  Holding Castiel’s gaze still, still like a hawk, and watching the irises vanish into black.

Castiel was fighting just to bear it.  To keep himself separated from the dream and not bring his whole body, his whole grace, his wings, his halo, all of him, everything that he was, and engulf Dean in himself, in his light, the way his fingers were engulfed in Dean's mouth.  

Castiel  _ wanted. _

He wanted  _ more _ .  More of Dean's mouth.  

He took it.  

Castiel of the Lord took what he wanted.  Maybe for the first time  _ ever,  _ there in that field, Castiel took what he wanted, and it was Dean Winchester's hot, wet, perfect, beautiful mouth.  He fucked his fingers into Dean's mouth, and he dragged them out slow.  Again, and again, fascinated by Dean's lips dragging over his knuckles, the coolness of the air outside of Dean's mouth on his saliva wet skin.  He practiced, curious, motions in and out, and his thumb rose up to touch the corner of Dean's stretched lips.  

He gave a third finger, slowly, hesitantly, questioning, _can I._ And Dean held his eyes and showed him, _Yes. Yes,_ until his third finger was in Dean's mouth.   _Dean took it,_ took that finger into his mouth so eagerly, no resistance, just heat, and warmth like an embrace.  Dean opened himself up and held himself there, mouth steady and wide, so Castiel could use him, use his mouth.  He gave it over to make Castiel feel good.  He gave it over with such trust, gave his mouth over with thin coronas of green barely visible around black irises that locked on Castiel like he was the sun and Dean wanted to go blind.

Dean looked at Castiel like he was the sun, and  _ he was the sun.   _ Made of light, made of fire, of power that can give life or destroy.  

Four fingers.  Thrust deep.

Dean had a body, and it was not bound by the rule of the dream like Dean's heart, and his brain.  It moaned.  It moaned deep, dark, embarrassing, even, so much want pent up for so long.  His face flushed red, as that moan hung on the air.

_ Beautiful,  _ Castiel thought, and wished he were brave enough to say it.  He tried to show it in his eyes.  He tried to show it when he did not pull away, but instead started fucking Dean's mouth with his fingers:  harder, longer, because all he wanted was to hear that sound again.  That beautiful, broken, hopeless, sound.  He would not have thought a  _ sound  _ could effect his body so profoundly, make his skin flush and prickle needle sharp behind his neck, make his cock harden a warm throb with every pulse of his heart.  But it did.  Oh, it did.  And he wanted it again.  

Dean's eyes watered, but he took Castiel’s fingers, every thrust.  He took them deep.  He let Castiel fuck his face with four fingers, he let his chin grow slick with saliva, he let Cas’ blunt nails scrape the roof of his mouth, the soft skin in his cheeks.  He took them and let them thrust in to him and he wanted  _ more.   _ So much more.  It was not enough.   _ Of course  _ it was not enough.  

He wished Castiel were fucking him with his cock, too, filling him up at both ends, hot and tight and inescapable.  He wished it was Castiel's cock in his mouth instead of his fingers.  God, his  _ fingers  _ tasted so good, his cock would be so… It would be so hot, and heavy, in his mouth, it would stretch him out, fill him up, he would  _ choke  _ on it, he would...

He moaned again.  Longer, harder, his face and neck all red now.  He moaned and palmed his cock, aching in his jeans.  He moaned and he took Castiel's fingers deeper, wanting more, more, more.  More of Castiel.  Always more.  Never enough.

Castiel stiffened, beside him, the bare skin on his torso shining with sweat.  He stiffened, and exhaled a high, voiceless, cry.  

Dean pulled off Cas’ fingers and opened his mouth to ask “Cas, what's wrong, are you OK?” rule of the dream be damned, but before the first sound came out, Castiel was gone.  

Dean waited there, in the field, for the rest of the night, longing, praying “Cas, I'm sorry, I don't know what's wrong, please come back.  Please.”

But Castiel did not come back before morning broke.


	4. Chapter 4

In the morning, Dean prayed.  His heart was so sore, from lying in that field alone until morning.  Lisa held him close, and kissed his shoulder, but her arms were too small, and soft, and her voice was too high, when she said _Good morning,_ and his eyes looked right through her and when she released him his heart still ached.  

His heart… raw and spinning, tumbling around inside him until it was dried out, bloodless, and so, so, sore, and full of  _ longing _ .  His heart found, and then lost again.  Cas was dead.  Cas was alive, in his dreams.  Cas ran from him, and he didn't know why.  

He wished, he wished there was anything _ , anything _ he could do to keep Cas with him.  He would do it.  Anything.  Anything to ease his poor, sore, heart.  To not have to feel  _ this.   _ To never feel this, ever again.  But there wasn't.

Instead, he prayed.

_ Cas, buddy, I don't know if you're up there or… or if I'm just gonna be a fly buzzing in your dick brothers’ ears. Guess I don't care anymore, if that's all I get.  I just… If that really was you, last night, I don't know what I did wrong, to make you leave like that.  Did I hurt you?  I would never hurt you Cas, never.  Were you… Were you afraid?  Was it too much too fast, did I push you?  I'm sorry, Cas, I just… you… For so long…  I should have told you, long before now.  Maybe then, you wouldn’t have been afraid.  Maybe then, you wouldn’t have had to run.   _

_ This year, it’s been so hard, without you… And I've missed you, so much, and needed... And so last night I wanted… I WANTED, I wanted everything, everything from you, but you didn't have to, you don't have to do anything ever, just because I want to… So I'm sorry for that, too, if I took too much, if I took anything you didn't want to give.  You can tell me ‘No’, Cas.  You can always tell me ‘No.’ I would never… Tell me ‘No,’ but don't leave me, please.  Please.  Please come back to me and don't leave me again. _

_ Um.  Amen. _

It hurt his body to roll out of bed, but he did.  He rolled out of bed and he drank some water and he packed his lunch and he went to work.  He let the hard labor of the construction site distract his body.  He hid away, in the corner of his mind, so that he didn't feel the burn of muscles, he didn't feel the sun on his bare neck, he didn’t feel anything at all.  He pounded nails.  He leveled boards.  He moved his body, and didn't listen to his sore heart.

Until lunchtime.  Then, his body slowed.  Then, he felt the sun, beating down on his back.  He felt the dig of his helmet against his temple.  He was uncomfortable, sitting on a concrete slab, sweating, but he did not comfort himself.  He did not move for the shade, for cool water, for a chair.  He stayed on his hard, baking hot slab and he ate his peanut butter and jelly sandwich dry, though it tasted like ash.  He did not reach for comfort.

Instead, he prayed.

_ Where'd you go, Cas?  Did you go back to Heaven?  Were you ever really with me, at all?  Why couldn't you stay, with me?  The sun was out, we were safe.  We had all night.  We didn't have to… We didn't have to do anything.  You coulda just laid there with me and drawn on my stomach like you did before, remember that?  That felt so good. Or, I thought that felt good.  I thought you did, too, even though you couldn't talk, I thought, your hands were so... And your eyes…. No one has ever touched me like that, Cas, so careful, so I thought… I thought you... _

_ So we coulda just done that-- I would have been happy-- or not even that much, if you didn't want to.  You coulda… you coulda walked around, and told me about the flowers.  I would have liked that, to hear your voice.  Or if you didn’t want to talk you coulda just laid there, too, the ground was soft.  We didn’t even have to be touching.  As long as you were there, as long as I could see you.  That’s what matters.  That’s what matters to me, being able to see you, knowing that you are OK, or being able to pretend that you are, even just for a night, even just in a dream.  It's better, when you're there, than when I have to lay in that field alone.  Do you believe me?  It's better.  I want you to know that. _

_ I just… It's a nice field, there's flowers there, and no monsters, it's better than almost all of my dreams, for sure, but… I wish you were there, all the time.  I wish you could have stayed.   _

_ Why couldn't you stay?  I don't even know if you're real, if I'm praying out into nothing, but… I wish you had stayed.  I always wish for you to stay.  Do you know  _ **_that_ ** _?  I hope you do.  I  _ **_always_ ** _ wish for you to stay.  I shoulda told you...   _

An air horn sounded on the construction site.  Lunch over.  Dean put the uneaten half of his sandwich back in his lunch box and stood, brushing dirt and gravel from his hands and his jeans.  Brushing the beginnings of tears from his dusty face, before they could make a trail.  

He adjusted his hard hat tighter on his head, though he already had a headache, and he went back to work.  Subdued and silent, for the rest of the day, not answering the jokes and requests of his crew members with more than a nod until they left him to his melancholy and the air horn sounded again for the end of the shift.  

The sun was setting, red and orange on the horizon, by then, and it was beautiful.  Dean wanted it to be night time so badly, but he was afraid of how sore his heart would be in the morning if he lay all night in that field alone, again.

He drove home, ate dinner, washed the dishes, watched TV too late, all like a zombie, Lisa pretending that she didn't notice, that everything was fine, carrying the weight of conversation for two, while Dean was barely present, his heart and his mind already back in that field, or still there, never having left the night before.  And in bed, when Lisa lay already sleeping sweetly beside him, breath soft and unburdened, Dean stared mute up at the ceiling, detached, so unsure about what the night would bring, or even what he wanted it to bring.  

The moon cast pale sheets and ceiling alike in a lilac tone as it moved across the night sky.  Dean lay awake, arm under his head, shadows cast in hard, straight lines on his face from the panes on the bedroom window glass.  Shadows that shifted as the moon rose and began to set, and Dean lay awake, still.  He wanted to sleep, but he could not, there were too many thoughts inside his head and his heart was too sore.

Instead, he prayed.

_ Were you real, Cas?  Were you really there, or did I only dream you?  Would you come to me, if you were alive?  Would I matter to you, anymore?  Or would you stay in Heaven, in your true form, size of the Sears Tower or whatever, just… In the clouds, or the stars, or whatever it's like there, with no humans to fuck things up?  With no me, to fuck things up?  Would you come to me, or could that only ever be a dream? _

_ I would want you to come for me.  You should know that.  I would want you to… This, what I have here, what I have now, it's nice, it’s safe, but it hurts, all the time, too.  It's empty.  I would want  _ **_you_ ** _.  If you were real, if you were alive.  If you're there, if you hear this, don't think that I've moved on,  Don't think that I've forgotten you, because I haven't, I think about you every goddamned day.  Don't think that I ever could forget about you, no matter how long you were gone.  Don't think that I would ever stop wanting you to come for me. _

He pauses.  Lisa turns over, beside him.  Not touching him.  The sheets cool, and crisp.  There are tears on his face.  They are warm and wet.  He doesn't brush them away.  He wants to close his eyes, and go back to that field.  But not if Cas won't be there.

Instead, he prays.

_ I was raking leaves last week.  I was thinking of you.  Wishing that I could have given myself up to Lucifer, gone in your place.  Wishing that it was you that was still alive instead of me.  Because you’re important, Cas.  You’re brave, and you’re strong, and you’re… and I… and you’re important.  More than I’ll ever be.  It was hard, thinking about that.  That I'm still here and you’re gone, that I’m still here and Sam’s gone, and there’s nothing I can do about it.  There were a couple of leaves left and I just couldn’t catch them; I couldn’t get them into the fucking pile, because I couldn’t concentrate on being just here, in my yard, raking leaves, when you are gone.  You should have been forever, you deserved to be forever, and you’re gone.  So I couldn’t rake up the fucking leaves. _

_ And then there was a moment… just a moment.  It was already sunny, but there was this moment like the sun came out from behind the clouds.  The leaves were redder, I could see them.  It was like the grass was growing at my feet.  Nothing ever grows, where I go, it only ever dies.  But this grass… it was growing.  And the sun came out, and I could feel it, for a second I wasn’t so goddamned numb, I wasn’t this block of ice, I could feel the sun on my skin and it was warm.   _

_ Was that you?   _

_ I would want you to come for me, Cas, I would always… I would want… _

He drifts to sleep, that way.  Thinking about what the sun felt like on his neck as he raked his leaves.  Thinking about Cas coming for him.  Thinking about how to tell Cas, so that he would understand.  It wasn’t quite comfort, but it was close enough to help his eyes close and sink into rest.

He dreamed of the field again.  But it was empty.  It was still bright, the earth was still soft on his back and the breeze was still warm over his skin, rustling the grass, his hair.  But it was empty, and the flowers seemed like they drooped a little.  They seemed like their petals were fading a little, fading away from the outside edge in.  Turning black.  It was bright in the field, but Dean felt like he was turning black, too.  All night, he lay in the field, and ran his fingers through the long grass at his sides, and stared up at the sun waiting for an angel to spiral down out of Heaven.  

But Castiel never came.

That’s how Dean knew that Castiel wasn’t real.  Wasn’t really alive, wasn’t visiting his dreams.  Because he didn’t believe that Castiel could have heard his prayers, could have heard him confess, beg for Castiel to come for him and never leave him again, please, please, and not come to him.  He didn’t believe it.  He knew Castiel was an angel and he knew angels were dicks but he didn’t think Castiel could ever be that cold.  Not  _ his  _ angel.  Not the one that gripped him tight.  

The next day was worse; his heart was even sorer, but he didn’t pray.


	5. Chapter 5

Castiel was humiliated when he fled Dean’s dream of the fields of Eden and returned to Heaven.  He was humiliated, and confused, and he was disgusted with himself and he didn’t know what to do.  

_ I never should have gone to him _ , he thought, as he landed in a cloud over the darkest part of Earth’s night, where he could be surrounded by blue-black sky and stars so far away that they could not see him cry.  He buried himself inside the cloud, cold and damp and dark.  He wrapped it around himself, bound his feet and legs and arms and covered his shamed face.   _ Stupid, stupid.  I should have known.  I should have known I could never go to him without… taking too much.   _

He folded his wings, and floated, there, feet pointed downward, towards earth, head bobbing, eyes closed, in the dark.  Waiting for his body to cool down, calm down.  Waiting for his heartbeat to return to normal.  Using grace to clean away the evidence of his body’s treachery, of his…  _ orgasm _ .  

_ How could you _ , he asked himself.   _ How could you let yourself react like… that.  It wasn’t supposed to be about that.  It wasn’t for your carnal pleasure.  You are an Angel of the Lord, not some demon, some incubus that cannot control its wants.  You were supposed to make sure that Dean was safe.  You were supposed to try to comfort him.  Not orgasm on your trenchcoat while you spied on him in his room in the night like some kind of pervert.  If he knew… if he knew what you’d done, that you’d violated him that way…. _ Castiel’s body racked in a sob, and he cried out, though he tried to silence himself, as a tear slipped from his eye.   _ You can’t do that again.  You can’t go back to him.  To be sure that this wouldn't happen again, there would have to be a new rule.  You’d have to only look at him, and not let him see you, and never touch... Unbearable.  That would be unbearable.  Better to stay away.  You can’t... _

And then, as if being able to sense the absolute  _ worst possible time for his presence _ , Gabriel appeared.  Followed shortly thereafter by Balthazar.  

“Go away,” Castiel told them, face and eyes covered by his wings, by wisps of cloud woven cold around him.  By the dark.

“Sure, absolutely, no problem, 100%, we’ll go away, NBD, of course.” Gabriel rolled his eyes at Balthazar, then continued:  “Right after you tell us  _ what the fuck happened.” _

“No.”  

Balthazar took a step forward, so he was in front of Gabriel, between him and Castiel’s floating body.  He gave Gabriel a dirty look, and attempted a more delicate approach.  

“Cassie, darling… what’s wrong?  You're hurting, dear heart, and it’s hurting all of us.  Gabriel may be a recalcitrant boor,” Gabriel’s turn for a dirty look, here, followed by a shrug of acceptance--he knows himself, “But we just want to help you.  Why are you hurting?  And why is your flannel-covered-plaything praying that he’s sorry, why is he begging you ‘please’?  Can you tell us, dear heart?  Can you let us help you?”  

“No.”

Balthazar sighed, and stepped back.  He and Gabriel looked at each other, trying to decide what to do next.  Balthazar was thinking that maybe there wasn’t anything else to say, and that they should just leave Castiel alone, as that was clearly what Castiel wanted. But Gabriel was not even close to giving up yet.  He screwed up his face, determinedly, and marched over to where Castiel was floating, high-stepping through wisps of cloud that tried to wrap around his knees.  

When he was close enough, he reached out and pulled Castiel’s wings apart right where they crossed over his face.  He immediately wished he hadn't; Castiel’s face was covered in tears and broken apart from crying.  He let the wings snap back together.  

Gabriel pulled the collar of his jacket out from his neck, slightly ashamed.  “Sorry, bro, I just…” he stammered at Castiel’s closed wings. “Hey, you don’t have to say anything to us, OK, but let’s go somewhere else?  Somewhere, I dunno, less dark and emo and depressing?  Somewhere Balthie and I can just kind of hang out, you know, keep an eye on you, make sure you’re not alone, make sure you’re ok, not like, cutting yourself with your blade and letting your grace leak out because you’re so sad like Luci used to in his Goth phase?  Is that OK?”

“No.”  

Castiel didn’t want to go somewhere else.  He didn’t want to go somewhere comfortable and warm and lit up bright where Gabriel would slap him on the back and tell him absurd, repulsive stories, and Balthazar would hug him under one arm and smile at him and offer him a glass of brandy.  He wanted his brothers to go away.  He wanted to stay here, where it was dark and cold and where he could be alone in his humiliation.  That’s what he wanted.  That’s what he deserved.  

Gabriel sighed an overly dramatic sigh, and collapsed backwards, a red leather couch appearing just in time to catch him.  He mouthed up at Balthazar  _ Worse than I thought.   _ Balthazar nodded in agreement, and summoned his own couch, black velvet, along with a highball of scotch.  He sat down and arranged himself with ankle crossed over knee and his arm over the back, and mouthed back at Gabriel  _ Boy trouble _ .

Gabriel nodded slowly, in agreement, thoughtful.  They all sat in silence for a minute or two, Balthazar sipping his scotch, Gabriel peering angrily up at the empty ionosphere, dancing his index fingers back and forth to help him think, Castiel sniffling behind his wings.  

“Kali never begs,” Gabriel said finally, crossing his legs and settling into his couch.  He summoned his own glass of scotch.  

Castiel doesn’t rise to the bait, so Balthazar replies.  “What?”  

“Kali never begs.  If she pisses me off and I peace out to Heaven or if I freak out and bail in a flurry of commitment phobia, she never begs.  She’d rather never see me again than have to say ‘Please.’”  

“I know what you’re doing Gabriel.  I’m not a child,” Castiel says gruffly, not letting go of the wisps of cloud twined around him, not letting his wings slip an inch.

“‘Course not.  You’re a very mature angelic adult who is hiding in a cloud over who-the-fuck-knows-where Earth and refusing to talk about what's bothering him.   _ Very  _ mature  11/10, would mature again.  Doesn’t matter.  I’m not talking to you.  I’m talking to Balthazar.  We’re having a drink.”  He reaches out the hand holding his highball, and he and Balthazar clink their glasses together.       

As if to confirm this, Balthazar next responds to Gabriel’s part of the conversation, ignoring Castiel completely:  “I’ve had the acquaintance of a number of lovely boys who have begged me quite prettily… but only when I had them in… compromising positions.  Never after I left them.  Never in prayer.” He looks down at his glass, then up at Gabriel.  “People, they pray  _ to _ me, they beg “Balthazar, please heal my daughter,” they beg “Balthazar, please, please, end this war,” they beg “Please, Balthazar, let me live long enough that I can see my home again, one more time.” Let me get the promotion, get the girl, win the game.  But I can’t say I’ve ever had anyone beg  _ for _ me.  Not just for  _ me _ , for my presence.  I wonder what that feels like.”  

Gabriel raises his glass and his eyebrows.  He doesn't know what that feels like, either.  All his long years, all the powers of the firmament, and he doesn't know what it feels like for someone to beg for him, just for him to be near.

Balthazar takes a sip of his scotch, and looks thoughtful.  “I wonder if I’d be able to resist it, that kind of prayer.  A prayer  _ for me _ .  I’m not certain that I could, to be truthful.  And if it were my charge, and I were in love with him…” he takes another sip, swirls around the ice in his glass.  “I’m weak, Gabby, you know that.  I can’t resist a pair of green eyes.  I’d probably give in.  Give him what he wanted.  Whatever it was.”    

“Go away,” Castiel says again, miserably, though this time he seems deflated, and there is less bite behind it.  His wings start to sag, until the most mussed tip of his tousled hair is just visible, but then they snap up in front of his face again.

“Have any of them ever loved you?” Gabriel asks Balthazar, ignoring Castiel.  “Any of your lovely boys?”  

Balthazar looks distantly over the rim of his glass.  “I don’t think so.”  He takes a sip, and swishes it around his mouth, tasting it, for a long second.  “I don’t think so,” he repeats, and sounds resigned.  “I think they’ve loved my power, or that I was an angel, or how I could make them feel.  I don’t think they’ve ever loved  _ me _ though.  Or if they tried, I never let them.”  

“You never let them?”  

“If they tried, I ran away.  Fucked off to some cloud, in Heaven.  Though, usually, mine had a bar.  I’m not a barbarian.”  He looks pointedly at Castiel, though Castiel’s wings are still covering his face and he doesn’t see it.  Gabriel chuckles.  

“I’m too… I’m not built, for that.  I see humans fall in love sometimes, really fall in love, and I don’t think I could do it, I don’t even understand it.  I don’t think I know how.  I don’t think I  _ can _ .  It’s too intense, too fast.  Too much fire and then over in an instant.  I’m too detached, from them.  I think the best I can do is just,” he raises his glass.  “... fuck my lovely boys, you know?”  

Gabriel nods.  “I hear you, bro.  I’ve known Kali for a million years, but that’s all we’ve ever done.  Fuck.  I think she’d… if she had to cut my balls off, to answer the call of one of her followers, she’d do it.  She’d do it.  That bond would matter more, to her, than anything she and I have between us.  I wouldn’t really blame her, either.  Dad knows I come running back upstairs every time one of the brethren sounds that fucking horn.”  

Balthazar takes this in, finger tapping against the crystal rim of his glass.  “And humans?”

“Bah,” Gabriel says, swigging down what’s left in his glass and tossing it carelessly over his shoulder where it disappears before it hits the ground.  “Too puny.  They die so fast, so easy.  I can barely keep track of them.  Except…” His eyes turn inward.

“Except?” prompts Balthazar.

“ _ Except _ maybe Moose Winchester… that one… hard to kill and hung like a horse.  I’d hit that in a Wisconsin Minute, but then again…  it’d be weird banging my bro’s boyfriend’s bro, you know?”  

“Don’t talk about Sam like that,” Castiel says, peeking one accusing eye out from between his wings.  

Gabriel looks over his shoulder at Castiel.  “Oh, what, now you’re joining the conversation?  Am I wrong?  Is Moose not hard to kill?  Does he not have a gargantuan dick?”  

Balthazar tries to keep a serious face.  “Yeah, Cassie, you’ve slummed around in the Brothers Plaid’s living quarters long enough to know--steamy showers and towels around all American hips and all that--but you've been hogging the details all to yourself.  Naughty. Who’s packing what?  I bet Green Eyes--”  

Castiel flaps his wings down, hard, and reaches out the tip of one to slap Balthazar’s glass out of his hand.  He doesn’t make it disappear, he lets it break into shards in a sharp crash against an unseen wall.  “Don’t talk about Dean, like that.”  

Balthazar’s mouth flaps open and shut like a fish’s.  Gabriel steps in smoothly, and takes up the cause. “Why not, baby bro?  He’s never gonna hear.  Balthie and I won’t say a peep, right Balthie?”  

Balthazar manages to close his mouth, make a lip zipping gesture, and mime tossing away the key.

“And  _ you’re _ never gonna tell him, right?  You’re fully committed to ignoring his pining--despite, might I interject, the fact that it  _ substantially  _ disrupts my beauty rest --and wallowing in your own misery until one of you --probably him -- dies in some gruesome, heroic,  _ unnecessary  _ clusterfuck of your own making, right?  That’s why you’re up here, isn’t it?  All stoic faced and ‘go away Gabriel’ this and ‘don’t talk about my boyfriend’s cock, Gabriel’ that. Lord Dad, if I had a nickel for every time--”

“Shut UP Gabriel!  Shut UP shut UP shut UP, SHUT UP.  Celestial Father, do you EVER shut up for one SECOND?”      

Gabriel stops short, with his lips in an O, joining Balthazar’s school of silent fish.  Balthazar looks back and forth between Castiel, Gabriel, Castiel again, eyebrows raised at Castiel's outburst but no words coming to him to use in response.  

Gabriel’s mouth snaps shut with a click of teeth on teeth.  He raises his eyebrows, and gestures expansively with both arms at Castiel.   _ By all means, _ his gesture says.   _ Do enlighten us regarding how we should discourse about the Brothers Winchester.   _

Castiel drops his wings, finally, with a sigh, and releases the wisps of cloud that were wrapped around him.  He sinks down heavily, so that he is standing on cloud, instead of floating, and walks over to Balthazar’s couch with tired steps.  He sits down.  He puts his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.  Balthazar and Gabriel look at each other, over Castiel’s bent back.  

He lets it out in short sentences, breathy, just barely audible, talking into his knees.  Long pauses between them as he gathers himself.  Gabriel and Balthazar do not interrupt, but Gabriel thinks  _ very hard. _

“Dean was longing for me.”

_ We all felt it. _

“It hurt my chest.  I didn't understand why.”

_ Because you have never been in love before.  Because none of us have. _

“I tried to ignore it.  I thought he was happy and it would ruin him if he knew I was alive.”

_ You didn't really think that.  You were afraid. _

“But eventually it just hurt too much.  So I went to check on him.  Just only to make sure he was OK!” This last with more emotion, delivered with Castiel's eyes wide, head raised from his knees, imploring his brothers to understand some nuance of this part of the confession that they did not.  

They tilt their heads to the sides, Balthazar confused-- _ you don't need a reason to see your charge, especially if he is hurting, and we all know Lovely Eyes was hurting-- _ Gabriel scheming, trying to work it out-- _ why ELSE would you go see him?  For sex?  Do you really think we would judge you for going to him for sex? Someone that hot?  That you’ve been eye fucking for years, no matter how inappropriate the situation? _  But they do not interrupt.

_ “ _ He wasn’t OK.” Now whispering again, head bowed again, the saddest sound yet.

_ We know.  We felt it.  We cried for you, and prayed to the Absent Father. _

“I wanted him to be ok, but he wasn’t.  He needed me.  He wasn’t happy.”

_ He never will be, without you.   _

“So I went to him in his dream.”

_ Ah,  _ Balthazar thought.   _ This is how it went wrong.   _ And  _ What did Green Eyes dream about you, little bro,  _ thought Gabriel.

“A couple of times, I went, and it was OK. I didn’t talk to him.”

_ It wasn't OK.  It hurt you to see him, and not be seen back.  Nothing hurts more, than that.  It made you desperate.  That's how we got here. _

“We just lay in the Garden, together, those times, we were together.  It was so beautiful.   _ He  _ was so beautiful, he was  _ everything.   _ His eyes, and his skin, and his body… even the smell of him in the grass, and the beat of his heart.  Flowers bloomed up all around us, they were fragrant, and the earth was soft beneath.  The sun in his eyes, like jewels, like gold, like everything precious.  Everything that is precious, to me.”

Castiel gasps, anguished, as he continues.  “It was so perfect.   _ He  _ was so perfect.  Why couldn't I just let it be, why did I have to risk taking more?  Why couldn't I just lay there, and be with him?” His voice heavy with tears, and his hands gripping his hair.  

_ Because it will never be enough of him, for you, you poor sorry son of a bitch.  Never.  No matter how much you get.   _ Gabriel understood this.  He had seen them look at each other, Dean and Castiel.  He had seen Castiel turn his back on the Host, and he had known why.  Uriel, Zachariah, Naomi, they didn't understand, but Gabriel did.  Gabriel had not been surprised, when Castiel rebelled.

Castiel is able to soothe himself enough to go on.  “I didn’t talk to him.  I made that rule.  I thought it would protect me.  If I couldn't speak, I couldn't confess.”

_ You confess with your eyes every time you look at him.  But his eyes are confessing too, so they do not see. _

“But I didn't realize how much could be confessed by touch alone.”

_ My brother Castiel, the only actual Virgin in all of Heaven.  Fuck. _

_ “ _ And then this last time, I touched him--” Castiel’s breath hitches on a new sob.  “I touched him and the way it felt... and his  _ mouth,  _ and he made this  _ sound _ .”  

_Here we go_.   _Now we’re getting to the good part._ Balthazar leans forward on his couch, attentive.

_ “ _ He felt so  _ good  _ and that  _ sound _ , it was like he was  _ dying _ .  Dying for me, dying because it felt so good, dying because he wanted more.  I had to hear it again, I had to make him feel that way, I HAD TO.”  

“Oh, Cassie,” Balthazar whispers, and places his open palm softly on Castiel’s back.  “Of course you did.”

“So I… I… and he made that sound again, and I… I…”

Gabriel makes a finger rolling “Get on with it” gesture that Castiel doesn’t see from where his head is cradled in his hands, but says nothing.  

“It was so beautiful.  It wasn’t crass, like you are making it out to be.  It was  _ so beautiful _ .  It was like the Creation.  It was perfect, it was everything.  It was life and the fire of the stars and the swell of the ocean.  And I… I… it was too much for me.  I… I…” His voice becomes almost silent, and wretched.  “I came.”  

“Oh, dear,” Balthazar says consolingly, and rubs his hand on Castiel’s back.  “What did your paramour say, then?”

“Nothing.  I don’t know.  Nothing.  I flew right here.  I didn’t wait to find out.  It was so humiliating.”  

Gabriel and Balthazar look each other.  Gabriel raises his hand out to Balthazar.   _ It’s all you. _  He knows himself, he can’t run with this in a productive manner.  Because  _ Castiel _ , the Lord Dad’s most special angel of actuarial tables and Thursdays,  _ came in his pants _ just from Dean Winchester’s sex noises.  Nope.  NopeNopeNope.  Gabriel can’t touch that one with a ten foot pole, if he wants to walk out of here alive.  

Balthazar loves his brother, and he does his best.  

“He still needs you, Cassie.  Didn’t you hear his prayer?  As soon as you left?  ‘I'm sorry, I don't know what's wrong, please come back.  Please.’  You didn’t do anything wrong.  He wants you back.  He  _ needs you _ .  Maybe more now than he did before.  He's going to need to know that he didn't hurt you, or scare you.  He's going to be afraid that… Whatever you did together, you didn't want it, and that's why you ran off.  You know him, Castiel, you know that he will blame himself.”

“‘S a cold move, bro.  Leaving a guy hanging like that,” Gabriel adds, for his part.

“I couldn’t look him in the eyes.” Castiel says, miserably.  “I couldn’t.  I can’t.  Not after that.”  

“Look, for sure, this situation isn’t  _ ideal _ ,” Gabriel says, sitting up and leaning forward.  “But--”

He never finished what he was about to say.  Because that’s when Dean prayed his first prayer, still lying in bed, just woken from his dream of an empty field, over on a part of Earth far in the distance where the light was just starting to turn pink.  All three angels fell silent.  Listening.

... _ Please come back to me and don't leave me again. _

Castiel and Balthazar had tears in their eyes by the time it was done, but Gabriel seemed agitated, shifting in his seat.  “Well, there you have it, brosef.  Could he have made it any clearer?  He’s not mad at you, he’s not disgusted, he’s taking it out on himself,  _ per usual _ and he  _ wants you back _ .  Is that enough, to get it through your thick skull?  Will you go back to him, now?”

Castiel cast his eyes down to the cloudy ground, in shame.  “I can’t.”  

Balthazar and Gabriel shared a sad look.   _ These fuckers.  These two fuckers. _  Then Balthazar threw his arm around Castiel and feigned levity.  “Come on Cassie, come with us to one of the bars.”  There are a  _ lot  _ of bars in Heaven.  “Come let us get you phenomenally drunk.  Don’t stay here sulking.  Please?”  

“Yeah, come on bro.  I’ll tell you that story about how I ended up fucking that psychadelic frog in a log cabin in Delaware.  You love that story.”  

Castiel does not love that story.  But his brothers look at him with such hopeful eyes, that are clearly covering up such sadness, for him, that he cannot resist them.  “OK,” he gives in.  “OK,” and then as Gabriel raises his hand to snap his fingers, he specifies, “but NOT the bar with the were-panther strippers.”  

Gabriel’s face falls.  Balthazar looks at him in surprise.  There is a bar with half human half panther strippers in Heaven?  And Gabriel has taken Castiel there, but not him?  What?  

“Fine, fine, a boring bar with NO strippers.”  Gabriel pauses before snapping his fingers.  Castiel nods his head down once, in agreement, Gabriel’s fingers snap, and the cloud is left behind, empty of angels.  

 

*****

 

They drink.  Three brothers of Heaven, veterans of every war ever waged on Earth.  They drink.  The bar Gabriel takes them to isn't too bad, by Castiel's standards (if not by Balthazar’s).  It's reminiscent of the kind of bar where Sam and Dean would drink-- it serves beer and whiskey, vodka and ice water and not much else.  But it's a little nicer than Sam and Dean's haunts-- the beer smell isn't as strong, and the tabletops aren't as sticky.  The booths are made of real leather, and they don't have holes where the stuffing is spilling out.  There's a pink neon sign hanging over the bar, a foot high, that says “Gabe’s”.  Castiel doesn't think that's always there, but he doesn't care enough to mention it.

The place is empty, except for the bartender, who understands them perfectly but is either mute or just not talking.  Castiel doesn't care enough to ask about this, either.  He just wants a drink.  Vodka, because Dean rarely drinks that.  Because it is clear and it burns.  The bartender doesn't say a word to him, but looks him up and down, once, when he approaches the bar, and hands him a whole bottle.  Bottom shelf.  

Castiel doesn't care about the provenance of his vodka.  He doesn't care that the bartender doesn't talk to him.  He doesn’t care that, for some reason, Gabriel is now wearing a leopard print bandana.  He doesn't care about anything but the memory of Dean's mouth, hot on his fingers, and his sadness --certainty -- that he will never feel it there again.

Gabriel hauls Cas in under his arm and drags him, pliant and unresisting, to a corner booth.  He leaves him there with Balthazar while he goes to put coins in a red and yellow lit juke box in the corner.  

Castiel drinks lukewarm vodka straight from the bottle, and stares down at the table as it trails fire down his throat, into his esophagus.  Balthazar drinks more slowly, from a glass with ice in it, conjured out of thin air, with no use for the silent bartender and his limited wares, and looks sadly at Castiel.   _ This is what my brother looks like, broken hearted.   _

When Gabriel comes back from the juke box he tells the Delaware story, even though Castiel and Balthazar have both heard it a hundred times and neither of them even liked it the first time.  Gabriel’s songs play out too loud in the empty bar:  You Shook Me, and Copa Cabana, and Never Gonna Give You Up.  Undaunted by their reaction to his first story, he tells them another one, where he claims that he is the inspiration both for the White Witch and Edmund in  _ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe _ \-- something about C.S. Lewis being religious and Gabe liking Turkish Delight and showy drag during WWI (“way before its time, Cassie.”)  None of it seems very plausible to Castiel, as he drinks his bottle of vodka down, swallow after determined swallow, until he doesn’t feel the burn any more.  

He doesn't respond to Gabriel’s absurd story telling, and Balthazar makes only absolutely the most perfunctory polite noises.  So, when the C.S. Lewis story is over, Gabriel doesn't start another one, instead staring down into his drink wordlessly and stirring the ice around with a tiny pink plastic stick loaded with Maraschino cherries, until the vinyl records on the juke box turn over and go quiet with empty clicks.  

Gabriel doesn't choose new songs.  

The bartender stands mute at the bar, polishing the same glass over and over with a soft cloth.

So it is silent in the bar when Dean bends his head and closes his eyes on the hot cement block at his construction site.  His prayer rings out in Heaven like a crystal bell.

... _ I always wish for you to stay.  Do you know that?  I hope you do.  I always wish for you to stay. _

They all hear it, every word, and there is no pretending they didn't.  

Gabriel opens his mouth.   _ Are we going to talk about this?  _ He wants to ask.   _ Is this enough?  Are you going to go to him now, you stubborn son of a bitch?  Or does he have to slit his wrists and spell your name out in his blood on the tile of the bathroom floor? _

But he doesn't get a chance to speak.  “Don't,” Castiel says as soon as he sees Gabriel’s lips move.  “Don't.  I just… I can't.  I want to.  I want to so much...” He rubs long fingers over his face, into his hair.  “But I can't.” And then he looks away from Gabriel, looks at his bottle of vodka, and takes a long swallow.  “I can't,” He says again, under his breath, enunciation still perfectly clear despite the fact that his bottle is half empty.  

“You  _ can,  _ love” Balthazar says gently.  “You can.  You  _ have to,  _ don't you see _?   _ It's what he wants.  Didn't you hear your poor charge, Cassie?  Wasn’t he clear enough, about what he wants?  He needs you.”

“I don't  _ have  _ to do anything,” Castiel replies, not looking up.  “And Dean doesn't… He wouldn't… If he knew…  No.  No.  I  _ can't _ .”

Gabriel and Balthazar, they can hear Dean's prayers and they can see the black misery pitted under Castiel's eyes, and they think:  this is so easy, so obvious; Cas should go to his charge.  It is why he was given over by the Father in the first place.  To save Dean.  To rescue him.  Not just once, but over and over and over again, whenever he needs it, timeless, forever.  That is what it means for an angel to have a charge.  That is what Castiel is denying Dean right now, they think.  It is not only selfish and pointless, it is blasphemous, too.  To ignore a charge’s call like that, in so much pain, and need, that could be answered.

Castiel and Dean would snap together like magnets, or puzzle pieces, they think, they would embrace and tears would flow and they would be as one. All would be well, all would be right.  All would be forgiven.  It is hard for them to understand why this  _ hasn’t _ happened before now, how Dean and Castiel have resisted it.  Resisted each other, when the force between them is so strong, electrical and snapping and burning anyone else that gets between them.  

But Gabriel and Balthazar don't feel the hot shame running up and down Cas’ spine, into his cheeks, needling his jaw.  They do not have charges of their own, and so they do not,  _ cannot  _ understand the failure of duty that Castiel committed when he went to Dean when he shouldn't have, distracted him from his happiness--his  _ real, earthly happiness -- _ spied on him, used his body for his own pleasure.  Castiel cannot allow himself to accept, or even imagine, that it was OK for him to have done any of those things.  He acted, for almost the first time, on his own volition, and look what it caused.  Dean suffering, violated.  Dean tearful, hurting, not taking care of himself, thirsty, stomach empty, skin hot and burning in the midday sun.  One touch from Castiel, and he was lost.

Castiel recriminates himself:  he should not have gone to Dean.  He should have left him alone, and then maybe, yes, Dean would feel hollow, or lonely when he rakes his leaves, but he would not feel this acute misery that he is now offering up in his prayers.  No.  That misery, every moment of it, every tug on Dean’s sore heart, is Castiel's to bear, to repent.  Because he could not stay away.  Because even silent, even with his rules, he took too much, revealed too much.  So he suffers guilt, and remorse, and shame, shame, shame.  And he vows he will do better, by his charge, now.  He will not make the same mistake.  He will stay away.  He will at least give Dean the  _ chance  _ to be happy again.

So he replies again to Balthazar.  “I can't.” He whispers, still staring down at the table.  “I can't.”

“You--” Balthazar starts to try again, but Castiel interrupts him.

“Be quiet, or leave.” This is not whispered.  This is commanded, by the warrior.

Gabriel opens his mouth again, closes it.  He stands up, and starts to pace with his fingers laced behind his head.  Balthazar stays at the table, and takes a deliberate, silent, drink, holding Castiel's eyes.  Castiel nods slightly in response.   _ You can stay.  Thank you. _

It is several hours on Earth until Dean lies in bed again, staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep, and offers up his third prayer, but that is hardly any time at all, for angels in Heaven.  Gabriel paces.  Balthazar drinks, slowly.  Castiel drinks, faster, desperately.  The bartender stands mute behind the counter, watching them all.

_...I would want you to come for me, Cas, I would always. _

Gabriel picks a glass up off the table nearest to where he paces and throws it at the wall, where it shatters.  Balthazar jumps at the sound, but Castiel is too far gone to even react.  

“Dammit, Cas, what's it gonna take,” Gabriel yells.  “Is there anything, anything on Dad's green Earth that is going to convince you to end this misery?  This completely bullshit, nihilistic,  _ self-imposed  _ misery?  Fucking…  _ FUCK!!!”  _ and he picks all the silverware up off the same table, and throws that against the wall, too.  It makes a satisfying clattering noise, and tumbles to the ground.

Castiel doesn't say anything in response to Gabriel’s outburst, but he pours a small volume of vodka out on the table, and begins to trace around in it with his finger.  

_ Great,  _ Gabriel thinks.   _ He's completely cracked _ .  But Balthazar, who is sitting close enough to see what Castiel is actually tracing, has a different reaction.

“Castiel!  Wait, don't, NO!”

Castiel doesn't listen, or even seem to hear him.  He slams his hand down on the sigil he drew out of vodka, and banishes his brothers.  

As the air swirls around in the empty spaces where Gabriel and Balthazar are suddenly  _ not,  _ Castiel takes a small drink.   _ Finally.  Quiet.   _

 

*****

For about 30 seconds, until Gabriel shows back up again, hair ruffled, jacket askew, missing one shoe.

“Dick move, bro,” he chastises.  “It's gonna take Ballz hours to get back here.  He was only trying to help.”

“I told you to be quiet,” Castiel says.

 

*****

 

The day with no prayers is worse.  

Castiel doesn't talk to Balthazar and Gabriel at all any more, no matter what they do, and although he doesn't try to banish them again, he doesn't look up at them or respond when they talk to each other.  He only stares at the bottom of his bottle of vodka, and drinks with a steady, heavy, cadence. When there is no liquid left there, he gestures with his fingers and makes the bottle disappear, then stands and walks to the bar to get a replacement from the still mute bartender.  The bartender hands him over a full bottle of the same vodka, every time, silent.  

Gabriel asks Castiel why he goes through the whole exchange with the bartender, why he uses grace to make the bottle disappear instead of making it be full again.  Castiel doesn't answer, he doesn't answer anything.  

It is frustrating, but they are worried.  Castiel's brothers, they are worried, and they do not want to leave him.  They do not know what he might do.  

Gabriel gives up trying to get Castiel to talk before Balthazar does.  He throws his hands up in the air, and makes his same red leather couch from the cloud appear, along with a huge TV on an empty wall of the bar.  It flickers with static for one second, then starts playing Caddyshack.  Gabriel lies back, makes himself comfortable, and watches.

But Balthazar sits with Castiel, for a while longer.   _ He doesn't even know for sure that you're alive, sweet heart, that's probably why he stopped.   _

And.  _ Because he doesn't know for sure and you didn't answer him, and he wouldn't want  _ **_us_ ** _ \-- _ he looks over at Gabriel, laying in his couch  _ to hear him. Not prayers like that.   _

And.   _ You know what he wants, he told you what he wants, _

And.  Go  _ to him.  End this senseless misery for both of your sakes and go to him. _

But Castiel doesn't answer him, or even look up from his bottle.  He wants to say “Yes, ok.” He wants to say “I love him.  I need him.  I will go to him now, and, I swear it, I will never be parted from him again.” He wants to swear this and let his grace bleed and make it true.  He wants to band himself in gold again and spread his wings wide and show himself to Dean, descending like Apollo from the sun.  But he can't.  He  _ can't.   _ Not yet.

So eventually Balthazar gives up, and joins Gabriel on his couch, and makes him watch Eyes Wide Shut while Gabriel mutters “pretentious son of a bitch” not-so-under-his-breath every five minutes… Until the nudity starts.  Then:  “Ballz, why didn't you just tell me this was about fucked up sex parties???”

“Because I wanted you to watch the movie with me, not get your dick out like you did that time in Los Angeles when I took you to Midnight Cowboy.”

“That was  _ one time, one time,  _ and I wouldn't ‘get my dick out’ with our bro over there having a total meltdown.  What do you think I am, a savage?”

“One time is one time too many, Gabriel!!  The right number of times to take your dick out in front of your brother is zero!  Zero times!  Zero even if we do have to be brothers for all of eternity!”

“Oh, sure, ok, so was zero the right number when you had your naked glitter bubble New Year’s party and I walked in on you with your glitter covered dick down Alan Cummings’ throat???”

“You weren't invited to that party!!  There was a good reason you weren't invited to that party!  All of those guests hated you, and I wanted to fuck all of them!  You should have learned your lesson after the Bachannalia de Gallico!!”

“That was literally two thousand years ago!  You can't let it go?”

“Julius.  Caesar.  Julius Caesar, Gabriel, I could have fucked Julius fucking Caesar if you hadn't walked in there wearing that  _ stupid toga... _ ”

They bicker with each other over the entire movie, and over the entire next one (Gabriel's pick:   _Fletch),_ and the one after that (Balthazar’s:   _Mulholland Drive),_ and by then Castiel is so drowned in his vodka, and his sadness, that he completely loses track of them.

They lose track of him, too.  He sits so still, so silent, for so long, that they both tacitly assume they will be watching movies in the bar until Cas drinks so much they have to pick him up and carry him off to a nice cloud; take off his shoes and trench coat and tuck him in safe and put him to sleep.

That's why they don't notice when he disappears.  

As much as they thought that he should get over his fucking millstone anyway and just go to his charge, if they had noticed him leaving in the state he was in (dirty, drunk, red eyed from crying), they probably would have tried to stop him.  


	6. Chapter 6

Two nights.  Two nights until Castiel returns at last to Dean.  One day of prayer, one day of silence.  Two days that felt longer than any of the past weeks, or months.  Two hard, hot, sore days.  

Castiel smells like vodka, and an unwashed body, when he returns.  He’s let his stubble grow out dark, and his hair is wild from running his fingers through it; pulling on it.  There are heavy circles under his eyes.  His coat is stained with alcohol, with ketchup Gabriel squeezed on him to try to get a reaction out of him, with blotches on the cuffs where he wiped tears, warm and salty, from his eyes.  So many tears.

His landing in the dark corner of Dean's room is unsteady; water glasses rattle on nightstands as he alights.  He throws a heavy blanket of grace on Lisa, immediately, and keeps her deep, deep, asleep, but Dean is already awake.  Dean is already staring at him with angry eyes, head rested on hands laced behind his neck.  Like he expected this.  Somehow.  Like somehow he knew that Castiel would come to him, stumbling, broken.

“Dean,” Castiel croaks out, voice rough from the alcohol and the silence; throat tight with pain, and sadness. His walls are gone.  His rule is gone.  Everything is gone.  Everything but this ache in his chest.  The ache that does not rest, but begs him to to go to Dean, to be near hm.  To touch him again.  The ache that is impossible.

“That you, Cas?”  Dean asks, voice quiet, deep and resigned.

“No,” Cas lies. “No, ‘S only a dream.” Another lie, slurred out, syllables broken on vodka.  A desperate lie.  Not told be believed.

And Dean does not believe it.  “Doesn't feel much like a dream.” His eyes pierce right through Cas when he says this.  They are worse than a sword.

Here he is; drunk enough and tired enough and beaten enough that his  _ longing  _ outweighs his  _ shame.   _ Here he is in Dean's room, Dean's eyes on him, and now is his chance to explain, to confess.  But though he imagined this chance a hundred times, a thousand, as he sat and drank in Heaven, now he just doesn't know what to say.  Not when Dean's eyes are on him like that, sharp and hard and dark with pain.  How can he say anything, to those eyes, how is there any hope of absolution, when he is the one that put that pain there.  

So:  “Dean,” Castiel repeats, weighing all the heavy words that he has to say; the explanations, the apologies.  The sins and the confessions.  There are four.  There are four crimes that he has committed against Dean’s poor, sore, heart.  He tries to organize them in his mind, though they shift and static and buzz.  

One:  he came to Dean on Earth when he shouldn't have.  He wasn’t called, he wasn’t ordered, he had no place, but he came anyway and wrecked Dean’s chance at happiness.  Maybe his only chance, that he will ever have.  

Two:  he took Dean's mouth for his pleasure, fingers fucking his face and trying to make Dean cry out, and he came in his angel’s garment like a wild dog in rut.  He did not cherish, did not worship, did not lay holy hands unto Dean's body as his angel should.  

Three.  He left.  He just left.  When he should be the one that never leaves Dean, not ever.

Four.  The worst.  He didn't respond to Dean's prayers.  They were so beautiful, Dean's prayers.  They asked for always, and forever,  and Dean’s heart was on every word, beating red and alive and vulnerable.  But Castiel ignored them, and now Dean's heart is pale and bloodless and sore, instead.  This was not just bad friendship.  This was not just dereliction of duty.  This was  _ blasphemy,  _ for Castiel to ignore the heart-prayers of his charge, given faithfully, and drink mutely in Heaven instead.

He has to make it better.  He has to atone.  Even if it means he has to reveal all that he has long kept hidden.  Even if it means he has to break rules he hasn't even thought up yet.  He is in the wrong.  He has damaged his charge, hurt him, hurt his heart.  He has to make it right.  It is his  _ duty _ , to make it right.  

He takes a step towards Dean, but stumbles.  And in his intoxication, he cannot find the way to stand back up.  His legs, his arms, they are water, and they twist, and the carpet underneath him rises and falls like the deck of a ship.  He fights, with himself, within the bondage of his trenchcoat, and he cannot rise.

He is still on the floor, when Dean speaks.

“I prayed to you, Cas.  I laid it all on the line.  But you left me hanging.”

Cas’ shame bursts up inside him like a fountain of neon, hot and bright.

He looks up, into Dean’s hurt eyes.  His voice is slow and sad when he replies.  “You prayed to me, Dean, my charge, and I heard you.” His eyes try to brighten into a glow as he says this, because these are the words of an angel.  But they sputter out, asphyxiated by his shame.  

“An’ I… I wanted… Wanted ‘ta give you everything you prayed for, with your truest heart.  Beautiful heart.  So beautiful... That is my charge, my duty...  To give you everything, holding nothing back, even myself, until the end of time.” He gets lost on  _ everything  _ like he did on  _ beautiful _ , his vision blurring out and then snapping back into focus; the floor swaying underneath him again, if more gently.  He stares down, and tries to will it to stay still.

“Everything.  Everything.” Wrapping his mouth around it.  _ Everything.   _ It's so  _ big,  _ it's so  _ much.   _ It's all there is, big and huge, and the weight of it is flat and dark and terrifying.  But Cas tastes it again,  _ “ _ Everything _.”  _ And yes, he nods curtly, though it makes his head spin.  That's right.  Yes.   _ Everything.   _ That is what he would give to Dean, what he  _ should _ give to him.  That is his charge.  That is what is right.  He continues.

“Everything you prayed for, I wanted to, I should have...  All that you prayed for and more.  Always.  Forever.   _ Forever.   _ I wanted to… You can't imagine, how I wanted to--”

Dean thinks maybe he could imagine.  He only wonders how long it has been, since he has been willing to give Cas  _ everything. Too long.   _ But he doesn't interrupt.

“But I couldn't.  I don't deserve.  Didn't wanna mess you up.  I hurt you, I heard that in your prayers, and I didn't wanna… Didn't want to hurt you more.”

Cas shakes his head, sadly.  “I b’long  t’ you, you know.  Given… Given to you.  My charge.  Forever.  I will always be yours.  No matter what.  But ‘M… I'm… I'm never gonna have you.  Never gonna, I know.” He sobs, brokenly, and clutches his heart.  “‘S always gonna… Always gonna hurt.” And then he just dissolves into tears, big, wet tears, sounds coming out of his mouth that aren't words.  Except, maybe, “Dean.”

Dean freezes up.  He's angry, he's still angry, because what Cas did, that hurt.  Leaving him in the field without a word, ignoring his prayers, ignoring his  _ confession.   _ When all Cas had to do to make it right was come back.  And explain himself.  There was no devil, no war, no captivity holding him away.  Only himself.  He heard Dean's prayers, and he heard they were true, and that they were meaningful and that they ground out Dean's heart like a cigarette under a boot heel.  And he didn't come.  Apparently, because he had been drinking the whole time.  

So Dean is _angry_ , and he _doesn't_ want to give up his defensive posture and move from his bed, he _doesn't_ want to kneel on the floor and gather Cas in his arms and kiss his temple and tell him it will be OK, it will all be OK, because Dean is his too and _always will be,_ no matter what.  

But… he’s angry but.. he isn't cold, he isn't heartless, he also can't just watch Castiel there, miserable on the floor, crying with his trenchcoat covered with ketchup that looks like blood in the dark.  He doesn't want  _ that.   _ He doesn't want Cas to  _ suffer,  _ never that.  He just wants Cas to talk to him.   _ And never leave,  _ a deep, dark, part of him whispers.   _ And never leave you, ever again. _

“Can you take us back there?” Dean finds himself asking.  “Can you take us back, to the field?” Maybe if they can go back there, they can go back to what they felt, there.  Maybe they can get it right.  Maybe they can undo what was done mistakenly.  Castiel can be the sun god, again, not this angel broken and stained on the bedroom floor.  Dean can see him again in the light, and touch him slowly and more carefully, more carefully even than before, and ask, every time, “Is this OK, Cas?  Does this feel good, Castiel, angel?”

His fingers reach out, imagining it.    

Maybe then Cas won't be afraid, or overwhelmed.  Maybe then he will just  _ stay.   _

“You would… You would want to go back?” Cas asks, sniffling, wiping his runny nose with the sleeve of his coat.  He can't believe it.  He can't believe that Dean would ever want that.  He can't believe that Gabriel was right.  

Dean's eyelids slide down, he drifts away from Castiel's gaze.  His next words aren't angry.  They are bashful, and shy.  “Told you,Cas.  I always wish for you to stay.  Told you I'd never stop wanting you to come for me.” His voice breaks.  “Didn't you believe me?”

Castiel stares at Dean's face, his blue eyes so wide and rimmed with tears that they are almost unreal.  His lip trembles for a moment and then he breaks out crying again, he can't help it.  “I believed you but… your heart, I could feel that too, I  _ always _ feel it, and your heart  _ hurt _ so much.  And that hurt, I knew, I  _ knew,  _ it was all my fault, all my fault,  _ because  _ I came to you,  _ because  _ I stayed too long.  I hated it that you hurt. I hated it that it was my fault.  I heard you, and I believed you, but I thought,  _ I can't hurt him like that again, I can't ever, I can't.” _

He's almost hyperventilating, so he pauses a moment, to breathe.  Then he says, more calmly, now almost resigned: “I can't, I can't, I can't.  Dean,  **I can't** hurt you like that.  Don’t let me.  Don’t make me.”  

Dean doesn't know what to say.  To almost any of this.  But it's OK, because Cas isn't finished, yet.

“Gabriel and Balthazar, they told me, they told me ‘Go to him,’ like it should be so easy, and I  _ wanted  _ to, so much, I did, Dean, please believe me, but that  _ want _ , that's how I hurt you, it made me come to you, and take too much, and make your heart sore, and I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, Dean…”

Dean doesn’t know what to say, but he realizes, recognizes, that this is getting out of hand.  Cas’ emotions are death spiraling, drunk spiraling way too fast, way too hard, too many feelings, too much hurt, and it is breaking Dean's heart and he can’t keep up with what Cas is feeling or even with his own feelings about what Cas is saying, and he can’t bear to see his angel broken like this and  _ took too much?   _ What could Cas mean by that?  Castiel could never take too much, from Dean.  There isn’t a part of Dean that doesn’t already belong to Castiel.  There wouldn't ever be.  Didn't Castiel know that?  Didn’t he see it, every time he looked into Dean’s eyes?  

The situation was slipping away from Dean, in a bad way, in a way that made him feel panicky and caged in, and he needed to try to get a handle on it.  

So: “Take us back to the dream, Cas.  Please.  ‘S too dark here, and you're hurting.  Please?  You didn't… You never… Just, take us back.  We're OK.  It's OK.  It's gonna be OK.  Let me show you.  That's how I can… That's what I know… take us back there, and let me show you.” He paused, and then tacked on one more “Please.”

Castiel wiped his face with his trenchcoat sleeve again.  “Dean… are you sure?  That you want to go back there… With me?”

“Yes Cas.  That's what I want.  With you.”

“OK, Dean.”  Castiel raises a hand, and complies, though he still doesn’t understand why, why Dean would go anywhere with him, let alone back to the Garden, why Dean would give him this chance.    

And then they aren’t in Dean’s room any more.  They are back in the field of Eden.  Dean is still lying on his back, and Castiel is still kneeling, but now Dean is lying at Castiel’s hip, instead of above and away, on his bed.  

Castiel is not touching him.  They are close, very close, but not touching.  Deliberately not touching.  Castiel’s hands are limp at his sides, his eyes are closed, lids dark, and tears are still streaming down his face.  

Dean swallows.  “Can I touch you, Cas?” A rough whisper.  He wants to.  The space between them, every space, is kniving his heart.

Castiel whimpers, the hurt sound of a small animal, caught in a trap.  His eyes squeeze shut, tighter.  But he nods.  

Not enough.  Not this time.  “Say it, Cas,” Dean’s voice wobbles.  “You have to tell me.”  A plea.

“Yes.  Dean.  Yes.  Touch me.”  

“OK, Cas.  I will.” He breathes out a small relief.  “Can I touch your hair?”

“Yes, Dean.  Please.”  Castiel sniffles, again.  

And Dean sits up, on one elbow, his right, in the grass.  He sits up, and with his left hand he smooths back Castiel’s hair.  One pass, and another.  Fingers soft and careful.  The oil and bar-grime fade away with each pass, Dean's fingers coaxing Cas’ grace to the surface, to care for this vessel that had for two days not cared for itself.

“Halo’s gone, angel,” Dean says, when Cas’ hair is smooth and clean.  “Can you bring it back for me?”  And his first finger draws straight across Castiel’s hairline, where he was banded with gold in the last dream.

But no halo appears.  

“Dean…” Castiel isn’t sure about this.  He let his body go sour, his hair go wild, his stubble too long, his coat too dirty, sweating, reeking, because that is what he deserved to dwell in.  Not the clean garment and banded gold of the sun god.  He let it all go for a  _ reason,  _ not only out of distraction, or carelessness.  And he’s not sure yet that that reason is erased, and that he deserves his bands of gold again.  He’s not even sure now if he ever deserved them.

“Sssshhh OK angel, OK.  Not if you don’t want to.  Nothing you don’t want.”   _ Tell me ‘no’, but don’t leave me again. _  Then.  “Can I touch your face?”  Dean’s fingers stop, waiting.  

Castiel whimpers again, and doesn’t answer Dean’s question.  He can’t.  Dean’s hands on his face, touching him the way they just touched his hair?  He can’t imagine.  He can’t bear the thought, it is too much, it overwhelms him.  So instead, he answers one of Dean’s prayers, just one part of one prayer from the first day.

“I remember, Dean,” He says dreamily, “I do remember, I remember when we laid here in the Garden and I drew on your stomach.  It did feel good.  It felt so good, Dean.  I’m so sorry.”  He starts to cry, again.  “I’m so sorry I ruined that for us.”  

“Ssshhh, Castiel.  Sssshhhh, sweetheart.  It’s OK.  Nothing’s ruined.”  Dean closes his eyes on tears, before they can betray him.  “Do you want… do you want to lay here, with me, again?  Do you want to touch me like that, again?”  

“Yes,” Castiel replies immediately, the word a sob, broken in half.  His cries spasming through him.  

“OK.  Ssshhhhh baby.  Come here.  Lay down.  It’s OK.”  Castiel doesn’t move, but to clench his fists at his sides.

Dean understands that clench of fists.  He has clenched his own fists, like that, before, when it was Cas.  Because he was afraid that if he was given an inch, he would take a mile.  A mile too far.  But he understands now, or he thinks he does, that for him, there is no mile too far.  There is nothing Castiel could take from him that he wouldn’t want to give.  Those clenching fists are clenching around a lie.  A lie they have both told themselves, for too long.  Far too long.

“It’s OK, Cas, that’s what I want, too.  I want you to lay here, with me, like that.  I prayed for it, remember?  I  _ prayed _ .  Will you answer my prayer? Will you be my angel?”

Cas keeps crying, even harder now, racked, full body sobs, but he nods his head.  “Yes, Dean,” he replies, and delicately, too drunk and crying too hard to be graceful, he leans over, on his side, curls his knees up into his chest, into the fetal position, and rests his head on a curled up arm.  He keeps his eyes closed up tight, and he does not touch Dean.

“That’s better,” Dean says, eyes full of concern, anger all leaked away from his body now, seeing how torn up Castiel is, how repentant.  How careful of him.  Though it seemed callous to Dean, when Castiel left him without a word and ignored his prayers, though it seemed hurtful and cruel, Dean sees now what it did to Cas.  How it hurt him.  That he did not act casually, or contemptfully of Dean.  That he was torn apart, too.  How many times, Dean wonders, has he roasted in anger at Cas, drinking, fighting, killing with abandon, thinking that Cas left him and forgot him, when instead Cas was broken up like this.  And did Cas think that Dean went on without him, unaffected, uncaring or even glad to be rid of him, all those times?  How much have they hurt each other, assuming indifference that did not exist?  And what can Dean say, now, to make sure that that never happens again?   

“Can I touch your arm, angel?” he asks, softly, quieter now, now that Castiel’s head is on a level with his own.  Inches away.  Not quite close enough to feel Castiel’s sobbing breaths. But still close.  “You’re so upset, Cas, baby, I wanna help you feel better.  Can I touch your arm?”  

“Yes, Dean,” Castiel cries, voice high.  “But I don’t understand why you want to.”  And his body shakes again, with his tears.  “After I… After I…”

“Hey.  Hey there.  Hey, sweetheart,” Dean says, and he wants to take Castiel in his arms and hold him, but he does not have permission for that, so he does not.  He places his hand on Castiel’s bicep, soft as he can.  “I’m not mad because, well, I’m not mad at all, now, I  _ wasn’t  _ mad--”  _ why is this so hard _ , “I  _ wasn’t  _ mad because you touched me, or because… because you  _ liked it _ .  I’m mad-- I  _ was  _ mad because you  _ left,  _ after.”   _ That’s almost always why I’m mad, at you, Castiel, really.  Never because you ask too much.  Always because you leave.  Because I don’t want you to ever leave. _

Castiel whimpers.

Dean squeezes his own eyes shut, frustrated, and tries harder.  This  _ matters _ , he’s got to get it right.  He can’t let Cas keep… keep  _ feeling  _ like this.   _ Hurting  _ like this.  Thinking that Dean doesn’t want him.  All of him.  Always.

“Do you understand?  You can touch me.  It’s OK… it’s OK for you to… feel good.  I want that.  It feels good when you touch me and I want to make  _ you _ feel good, too.  OK?  You just can’t… please don’t leave.  It’s not OK, when you leave.  It’s not OK, when you won’t talk to me.  Do you understand?  That’s what’s not OK.  That’s  _ all  _ that’s not OK.”  He pauses “Can you talk to me, Cas?  Please?”

“Dean,” Castiel sobs out, and then words are flooding out of him.  “I thought you were happy, without me.  I thought… I thought I should leave you alone.  I thought I would ruin what you had, if you knew I was alive.  But you were so sad.  So, so sad.  I wanted to make you feel better.  I couldn’t just watch… you were so sad.”  

He hiccups.  “So I came to you.  But I was afraid, Dean.  I was afraid, because… I didn’t want you to see.  I couldn’t let you see.  It would _ruin you._ You have a life now, you’re _safe_ , finally, nothing’s after you, and if you saw, if you saw how much I _need you_ , if you saw… if you saw that I _love you_ , more than _anything,_ that I _need you every second,_ with me, safe with me, near my heart, under my wing, every _second_ … I was afraid you would try to come for me.  I was afraid it would ruin you.  The angels, or their enemies… _my_ enemies in Heaven, in Hell...  Some of them, all of them… They would hurt you, they would take away everything you have, when you had to fight so hard for it, lose so much to get it.  I was so afraid, Dean.  But I wanted you, so much.  You were so… you were so beautiful.  You are always so beautiful.  It was too much for me.  I came to you, my sad beauty, and now I've made your heart sore.  I’m so sorry.”  

“Ssshhh, Cas.”  Dean’s hand stills on Castiel’s arm.  All of that.  All of that going through Castiel’s mind, so many considerations to weigh against each other, when it should have been so easy.  Castiel needs Dean near his heart every second.  Dean  _ wants _ to be under Castiel’s wing, every second.  It should be so easy.  But instead it was this hard.  A tear leaks out of Dean’s eye for his angel.  His angel that is so, so good.  That loves him so well.  That tries so hard to be true.    

Castiel doesn’t see Dean’s tear, he is deep in his confession.  “And I heard your prayers, I did, I heard them, but I was  _ ashamed _ .  I came down here, flying down out of the sun, showing off, banded in gold,  _ taking  _ your mouth....  _ Taking  _ the sounds, that you made… becoming an  _ animal.  _ I wasn’t an angel.  I wasn’t  _ your  _ angel, I didn’t revere you, I wasn’t true, I was an  _ animal. _  And so when I left I was ashamed, I was  _ so ashamed.   _ I heard your prayers, and I wanted to come back to you, I did, Dean, but I was so ashamed.  So I hid.  I hid, and I drank, like a coward. _ ”   _ He hiccups again.  “I’m  _ so sorry, Dean.   _ Please.  Believe me.  I’m so sorry.  I’m so sorry and I still love you.  I still love you and I’m sorry, and I want to be your angel again.  That's all I want.  It's the only thing I've ever wanted, just for me, for myself, ever, and now I've ruined it and your heart is sore.” His head collapses at the end of this on a chest shaking with sobs.

“Ssshhhh, Ssshhhh, Cas.  Sssshhhh, sweetheart.  Ssssshhhh angel.  Hey.  I told you.  It’s ok.  You weren’t an animal.  You were my angel.  Always my angel.  Always what I want.  I wasn’t mad that you came to me, or that you touched me, or how you touched me, or how you reacted.  I was only mad that you went away.  You have to hear me.  I know you’re sorry, I know you feel bad, fuck, I know how that goes, I’m there 99% of the time, and whatever it is, someone tells me ‘it’s not your fault,’ or ‘it’s ok’, and I don’t believe it, I just keep on feeling bad, feeling sorry, anyway.  I understand.  But I don’t want that, for you, sweetheart.  You have to hear me.  Please hear me, angel.  I'm not mad that you showed yourself to me.  I'm not mad that I made you come with my mouth-- I was  _ trying _ to make you feel good, to give that to you, and I’m  _ proud _ that I did.  I was only ever mad that you went away.  And now you’re back.  And you were always my angel, that’s why I prayed to you.  What, you think I'm gonna pray to that dick Gabriel?  No way.  You’re my angel.  You always will be.  Please.  Hear me.”  

Dean strokes his hand down Castiel’s arm as he says this, down slowly, gently, and then back up, hoping that his words are getting through the thick shroud of guilt, and pain, that Castiel is wearing.  The stains on the trenchcoat start to clean themselves under his hand, as he strokes, as he talks, until it is clean again.  Castiel’s cries quiet inside his chest, as he strokes, as he talks, until they are tiny, soft, little things.  Just little, sad, breaths.  

“M your angel?”  Castiel asks, under his breath, like he can’t even begin to hope.  “Still?”

“Always, Cas.  Always, sweetheart.  I promise.”  Dean combs his fingers into Castiel’s hair, and it is soft, and clean, and he combs again and Castiel’s band of gold appears, under the palm of his hand.  Dull, not glinting in the sun, but it is there.  

“Dean,” Castiel swallows heavily.  “Can I… May I… Can I touch your stomach, with my fingers, again?  Like before.”  

Dean sighs.   _ Finally.   _ “Yes, Cas.  Yes.”  

Castiel reaches out, slowly, his fingers just peeking out of the cuff of his trenchcoat.  His hand is trembling.  He touches just the first one to the very center of Dean’s stomach, light as the feathers of a newborn chick.  Tears are still in his eyes, but they are different, now.  They aren’t sobs; they are awestruck.  He cannot believe that he has been given this forgiveness.  He cannot believe that he has been given this chance.  He cannot believe that there was never a time when he wasn’t Dean’s angel.  

Dean laces his own hands together, under his head, and relaxes on them, closes his eyes.  “Feels good, Cas.  Always feels good, when you touch me.”  

“I like to touch you,” Castiel says, sadness mixing with awe in his voice.  “I shouldn’t, but I do.”  

“Fuck ‘shouldn’t,” Dean says easily, eyes still closed.  “I’m right here with you, sweetheart.  You ain’t doin’ no wrong.”

_ Oh Dean, _ Castiel thinks _.  How can you be so good?   _ And he draws his finger in a gentle circle on Dean’s stomach, the simplest of patterns, and remembers that Dean said it only wasn’t OK when Castiel didn’t talk to him.  So he says it out loud.  “Oh Dean.  How can you be so good?”  He says it and he sees:  his rule of silence was so dangerous.  This is so much safer.  This is so much  _ better _ .  He didn’t think anything could be better, than just lying here, with Dean, but this is.  

“‘M not good,” Dean says, though he is wrong.  

“You are, Dean.  I’ll show you.”  

“Mmmmm.  OK, Cas.  OK.”  Dean feeling too tired, now, that his cares are melting way, too relaxed in the sun, under Castiel’s hands, near his body, to argue.  “You gonna stay with me?”  That’s what matters.  That’s the only thing.

“Yes.  Yes, Dean.”

And he does.  He stays there all night, and late into the morning, by Dean’s side, fingers on his stomach and nothing more.  

He tells Dean how he is good.  How the demons fear him, feared him even when he was in Hell and they thought he was one of them, thought he was subjugated; how the angels fear him, because he understands something they do not.  

He tells Dean how he is beautiful.  He tells Dean about his eyes, how the are like the autumn leaves in the sun.  He tells Dean about the freckles on his cheeks and how all the angels envy him, Castiel, because he gets to brush his eyes over them and count them, over and over, a different count every time.  He tells Dean about his eyelashes, and how they are threads of gold, and how they cast shadows on his cheeks when he sleeps that Castiel can stare at for hours.   

He tells Dean how he is brave.  How no one has ever survived what he survived for 30 years.  How no one has ever faced all the evil that he has faced.  How he raised his brother when he was too young, and too scared, and never should have had to.  How he saved the world, so many times, though no one ever thanked him for it.  Dean begins to cry, when Castiel begins to list the names of every soul Dean saved.  It is a long list, and Dean asks Castiel to stop before he can make it through a tenth of it.  Like it is hurting him, just to hear that he is good.  Castiel does stop, but he promises himself he will finish the list, someday.  

Castiel tells Dean every thought he had in his head every minute that he was in Heaven, the last two days, every thought that he bore silently, stoically, even as Gabriel and Balthazar cajoled him and pleaded with him to talk.

He tells Dean that he loves him.  That he never wants him to hurt.  That he wants to be with him, always.  That he would do anything, go anywhere, kill anyone, to keep him safe.  That no one has ever shed as many tears in Heaven as he did, the last two days, keeping himself apart.    

He tells Dean how much he wants him, how Dean’s voice echoes in shivers down his spine, how he can’t take his eyes of Dean’s lips, sometimes, how much he wants to put his hands everywhere on Dean’s body and how he doesn’t understand why.  He tells Dean that he has never felt anything like the feel of his tongue on his fingers.  

“And I love you,” that is what Castiel says in the end.  That is all he says in the end, for hours.  “I love you.  I love you, Dean.  I love you.”  Everything he didn’t want to confess, laid bare.  Everything that he held back, given.  

“I love you.  I love you.  I love you.”  Long after the sun rose.  Long into the day.  

“I love you, Dean.  I love you.  Forever.”  


	7. Chapter 7

One day.  One day, only.  Between when Dean rose from bed, eyes bright, well rested, sun-warm from his dream of Castiel, and the Garden, and when he laid back down in his bed, and let his eyes grow heavy, and drifted immediately to sleep.  Only one day, before Castiel returned.  One day of  _ happiness  _ for Dean, between knowing that Castiel loved him and knowing that Castiel would return for him, and touch him in the sun. One day, and his heart was so light.  

Only one day, before Castiel will spiral down out of the sky of Dean's dream, again.  This time carrying flowers.  Roses, and peonies, sunflowers, daffodils.  He will spend all day in the Garden choosing them, choosing the most beautiful of all the flowers there.  Ana will help him in the morning, and smile at him when he hums a sweet song.  It doesn't have words, but she recognizes it.  It sounds like “I love him.”

One day, all day, Castiel’s wings flexed proud behind him, full of grace, because he can feel Dean’s heart, not tired, not aching, not sore.  Instead golden.  Instead, floating easy in the daylight.  Castiel's bees buzzing around him, a warmth to the sound of their flight.  A warmth that buzzes out:  “I love him.”

One day, all day, ignoring Gabriel and Balthazar, who sit on the grass behind Castiel, drinking mead and slow-clapping at him, smiling and yelling at him as he hums his sweet, wordless song:  “I told you so, you stupid son of a bitch” (Gabriel) and “I’m happy for you, Cassie.  We all are,” (Balthazar).  Ignoring Gabriel passed out on his back in the grass in the evening, singing The Boating Song at the top of his lungs. Ignoring it better than Balthazar, who shoves at Gabriel's side and slurs “you never rowed for Eton, you heathen,” in his primmest British accent, and then passes out snoring on Gabriel’s chest.  All the while Castiel smiling at his brothers, and the scented flowers, and choosing the best ones, and harboring secret (but not secret) in his mind the thought :  “I love him.”

All day just  _ happiness  _ for Castiel, knowing that Dean forgives him, knowing that he will get to spend the whole night with Dean again when the moon rises.  Knowing that if he wants, he can lay by Dean’s side in the dream for hours, and draw on his stomach in the endless sun.  Knowing that in the coming evening's darkness  _ he will have all that he ever wanted _ .  And how could he be happier than that.  In Heaven truly, for the first time in all of his existence, in Heaven.   

And when the night comes on Earth and Dean slips into dreams, Castiel does not wait, he spirals down out of the sky, golden banded, dressed in white again, arms overflowing with flowers, and lands at Dean’s side.  He sits cross-legged with his knees against Dean’s, and drops his load of flowers on Dean's chest, and says “I’m going to make you a crown.”  

Dean’s eyes narrowed against the sun, looking up at Castiel.  Dubious, he asked:  “You gonna stay with me, Cas?”  The last thing Dean said to him yesterday, the first thing today. The most important thing.  Always.  Crown or sword or iron or salt.    

“All night,” Castiel replied, devotedly.  “All morning.  As long as I can.  Today, tomorrow, forever.”  He meant it.  He  _ meant it _ , he did, with all his heart.  With body and mind, on his lips and skin and breath, he meant it.  With the wisdom of ages and hardness of battle and burning of his grace in the stars, he meant it.  

He smiled when he said it,  _ forever,  _ and his heart soared, because he  _ meant it _ .    

“Then OK,” Dean said, and took one of the flowers out of the heap, a daffodil, and bit down on it with his teeth, breaking the flesh of the stem.  His eyes were rings of gold, heavy lidded, and the freckles dusted on his cheeks were brown and uncountable.  “When you’re done making my crown, will you touch me, again?”  He asked around the stem of the flower, in his mouth.  

Castiel shivered, his hands trembling where they held the stems of two roses, that he was beginning to weave together.  “Yes, Dean.”

“Will you kiss me tonight, Cas?”  Dean asked, his lips pink against the green stem, his teeth white, his cheeks blushed.  His hair ruffled by his hands, by the wind.  Strands golden, with the flare of the sun behind him.  He was too beautiful to be real.  He was too beautiful to be denied.  

“Yes, Dean,” Castiel whispered, his voice trembling too.  “I will make you a crown and I will place it on your head and then I will kiss your lips.”

Dean rolled the daffodil stem over in his mouth, eyes hooded, dangerous.  “Will you kiss my neck, too, Castiel?  Will you kiss my shoulders, and my hands, and my chest?”

“Yes, Dean,” Castiel answered, voice barely audible, hands and roses dropped in his lap.  “Yes.  I… Want that.  Have wanted it.  Have imagined it, through long sleepless hours in Heaven.  For a very long time.”

A beat of silence passed, and it seemed to Dean that Castiel wanted to say more, but he remained silent.  Dean closed his eyes, and relaxed back onto his laced hands, as he had done in previous nights, chewing the stem of the daffodil and tasting its sweet and bitter liquid.

Dean was fully settled into the silence, when Castiel began to speak again.  Very quietly at first, but picking up volume as he went along, his voice smooth and even.

_ “Oh Beloved, _  
_ take me. _  
_ Liberate my soul. _  
_ Fill me with your love and _  
_ release me from the two worlds.  _  
_ If I set my heart on anything but you _  
_ let fire burn me from inside. _  
__  
_ Oh Beloved, _  
_ take away what I want. _  
_ Take away what I do. _  
_ Take away what I need. _  
_ Take away everything _  
__ that takes me from you.”

He paused for a moment, at the end, breathing heavily, not from the exertion of reciting the poem but from the intensity of emotions it summoned. “Always, Dean.” He said, a little shyly.  “Want you to know that.  Always.”

“OK, Cas, OK,” Dean said, and there was another moment of silence as Cas weaved, and Dean tapped his fingers against the back of his head.  Then Dean cleared his throat.  He hummed a little, the beginnings of a song that Castiel thought he should recognize.   It was familiar, from somewhere.  Castiel was trying to place it, when Dean stopped humming and  _ sang,  _ voice like amber in the sun.

“ _Should I fall out of love, my fire in the light_  
_To chase a feather in the wind_  
_Within the glow that weaves a cloak of delight_  
_There moves a thread that has no end_  
__  
_For many hours and days that pass ever soon_  
_The tides have caused the flame to dim_  
_At last the arm is straight, the hand to the loom_  
_Is this to end or just begin?_  
__  
_All of my love, all of my love_  
_All of my love to you, oh_  
__  
_All of my love, all of my love, oh_  
__All of my love to you.”

He’s quiet by the end, and his face is flushed with a deep blush.  He pauses as the song hangs in the warm air and slowly fades away, and then says, shyly.  “You too, Cas.  Always.”

“My fire in the light,” Castiel says slowly, carefully, as he weaves.  “All of my love, to you.”

The sun is warm.  The Garden is quiet.   _ All of my love, to you. _

Dean turns onto his side, slowly, carefully, and holds himself up on one elbow, so he can watch Castiel weave his crown.  Castiel’s hands are strong and sure, his fingers deft and gentle on each stem, each petal, as he weaves.  Dean is mesmerized.  He has always loved Castiel’s hands.  He has always imagined what they would feel like, on his body.

He imagines that now.  He imagines that  _ he _ is the flower, that Castiel is opening  _ him  _ up, bending him and curving his hands around him, making him into new shapes, making him into something beautiful.

When Castiel finishes his weaving, and places the crown on Dean’s head, he does it slowly and reverently, like he is crowing Dean the King of Heaven, not only his lover in a field of dreams.  He stares at Dean hard, to try to capture this moment in his memory, every detail, so he will never, ever forget.  Roses, on Dean's brow, lighter in shade than his lips, but not softer.  Woven over his ears with peonies, pale pink and opened only shyly.  And the daffodils, orange, a contrast, and now forever reminding Castiel of the sight of one held between Dean's teeth, in his mouth.

Beautiful, his king.  His hero.  Beautiful.

“May I kiss you now, Dean?”  he asks, when this memory is woven into his true form, a part of him, one twinkling light among thousands, forever.  His voice trembles, revealing that he has waited since before time for this moment.  “May I kiss your lips?”  

Dean runs his fingers over the crown on his head, enjoying all the textures, the softness.  He draws the moment out.  He has not been waiting as long as Cas, for this, only one lifetime, and he lets Castiel’s question float heavy between them for as long as he can bear it.  This is the last moment.  This is the last moment, before he loses his heart.

[ _ No.  Castiel laid one hand in him in Hell, and he was lost.] _

He is staring into Castiel’s eyes, when he says “Yes.”  

He is staring into Castiel’s eyes when Castiel leans in.  

He kisses Castiel with his eyes open.

And when he feels as if he is going to drown if he stares into that blue one moment longer, he closes his eyes, and leans back, lays down on the soft grass, arms around Castiel, helping him to follow.          __

 

*****

 

Castiel knew how to save Dean, and mourn him, how to watch him die, how to love him at a distance and how to crown him, but not how to kiss him.  He  _ wanted,  _ so much, all at once, but his mouth could not get in the right place, the right angle.  He wanted too much, too fast, everything.

But he knew, even so, that when Dean pulled him down onto the grass, their bodies were unaligned, not close enough:  Castiel was hunched over Dean’s side, still cross-legged in the grass, Dean laid out beside him, not touching anywhere but his arms on Castiel’s back, his lips on Castiel’s lips.  

So he climbed into Dean's lap.  He hugged Dean's hips with his knees, he flattened his chest against Dean's chest, he threaded his fingers into Dean's hair.  He did not know what to do with his mouth, how to match the overwhelming heat and slick and pressure, the teeth and lips and tongue that Dean moved against him.  But he knew that he wanted to be closer.   _ Closer.   _ He threaded his hands into Dean’s hair and  _ pulled.   _

Dean made a small noise, in the back of his throat, and Castiel thought it might be distress.  He remembered their new rule, the rule that inverted their old one, the rule that said that there could not be silence, between them.  He had broken it, pressing himself against Dean’s body wordlessly, without asking.  He had broken it, and so he tried to sit back up, sit away from Dean, and ask him for the closeness he wanted.  

But Dean caught him, with ten fingers sprawled strong on the small of his back, and a heavy lidded stare.  “Where you goin’, Cas?”  He drawled.  “Thought you were gonna stay with me?”

And Heaven, Castiel would have done anything for Dean in that moment.  He would have stolen him any crown, or made him one from the stars. He would have given up the light, and sworn himself to shadows.  He would have given up the forgiveness of the Father, and sworn himself to violence.  He would have torn out his grace, and every feather of his wings, one by one, and sworn himself to the armies of Hell, forever.  He would have, he wanted to.  If it meant that he  _ could  _ stay with Dean.  Not just tonight.  Every night.  Every day.  Forever.

“You sounded distressed.  I should have asked you.  May I cover your body with mine, Dean?  May I thread my fingers into your hair?” Then, softer, looking away.  “I want to be closer, to you.”

Dean touched one finger to the point of Castiel's chin and brought his gaze back up.  He held Castiel silent there for a moment, so Castiel could see the lust in his eyes, black and round and only thinly ringed with green.  Then he said “Yes.  Castiel.  Tonight, anything you want,  _ yes.” _

Cast jerked his eyes away, then, and cast them down in shame.  “Don't say that, Dean,” He whispered, his voice trembling.  “You don't know what I've imagined.”  _ You don't know about the lightning.  And the thunder.  You don't know how loud you scream, or how hard, when I imagine  _ **_anything._ ** ”

Dean guided Castiel’s gaze back, gently, again.  “You don't know what  _ I've  _ imagined, angel.  You  _ couldn't.”  The sparks and the breaking glass and the walls collapsing around us.  The heat and the bruises that I do not ask you to heal.   _ He pauses.  “Anything you want, angel.   _ Anything.” _

“You've… Imagined?” Castiel asks, lust-broken, awestruck.  What could Dean have imagined, with him?

Dean nods his head, seriously.   _ Yes. _

_ “ _ You've imagined me… Kissing you?”  Castiel’s voice is becoming a growl.  

Dean nods again.

“Tell me how I did it.  Tell me how I kissed you in your dreams.”  His fingers dig into Dean’s tshirt and hold on tight, as if he can pull the answer from Dean by pulling on his shirt.

Dean shivers.  The black in his eyes is warmed by a smile.  The finger holding up Castiel’s chin becomes a palm, that cradles his face.  “Imagined it so many ways, with you, Cas.”  

A candle lights inside Castiel, small and soft and warm.  “Tell me.” There has never been anything Castiel has wanted to know this badly.  He clenches his fingers in Dean's shirt again, to keep himself from floating away.

Dean clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth, thinking.  Cas waits for him to answer, rapt.

“Well, I imagined you might be so sweet, my angel, like a butterfly.  Light kisses all over my face, on my cheeks, my lips, over my eyelids.”  He slides a thumb along Castiel's cheekbone and stares, before starting to speak again.  “My eyes would be closed, so I could feel you.  So I wouldn’t be thinking about anything else, wouldn’t be feeling anything else.  Only you.  You’d kiss me there over and over, so soft, like little wings.  Sweet like candy.”   _ Spun sugar on my lips, so light and sweet. _

“Mmm.”  Castiel kisses Dean on his forehead, as lightly as he can, then each of his cheekbones, the tip of his chin.  “Like that?” He asks, breathlessly.  

“Just like that, angel.”

“How else did I kiss you, Dean?”

“Sometimes, I thought you might be like rain.  Long wet drops, on my face, on my neck.  Your mouth would be open and you’d press it to me and taste my skin.  Your tongue would be covered in it, in my taste.  It would be all you could think about.”  

Castiel swallows.  He tastes Dean on his tongue, from the kisses they just shared, and when his tongue moves with his throat, that taste takes over his whole body for a moment.  And yes, it’s the only sensation he has.  No sight of blue sky, no sound of bees buzzing, no feel of grass under his knees.  Just that taste,  _ Dean _ , on his tongue.  Ashes, and pine.  He salivates.  His jaw is tight around “What else?”  

“Most of the time, you were like thunder and lightning.  Like-- you remember when we met, Cas?  You remember the sparks, and the fire?  You remember the glass breaking?”

“I remember,” a growled whisper.

“You were like that.  Your hands were in my hair and they pulled.  You pushed me down, or back, until there was hardness behind me I couldn’t be pushed any further and your whole body was crackling against mine, sparks bursting.  And your lips were so hard on mine that I could feel your teeth through them.  You fucked my mouth with your tongue and you bit my neck until it bled and the only word you said was ’Mine.’ You were so rough that I cried out, and when I did you only kissed me rougher, shoved me harder, pulled my hair tighter, and I came before you even touched my cock.”  

Castiel realizes he is growling, in Dean’s palm.  His dick is hard, against Dean’s thigh.  He knows Dean can feel it, and he grinds his hips down into it, just a little, just an inch.  

“Yeah.  That’s right, angel.”  Dean’s lids are slipping closed.  

“Dean,” he growls, hopelessly.  “Dean,” with another short thrust of his hips.

“Tell me what you want, baby.  Tell me what you wanna do.”  

“Wanna be your angel.”  

“Always, Cas.  What else.”

“I want to be the rain, Dean.”  Dean groans.  “I want my lips to be hot and wet on your neck.  I want to taste you.  I want to cover one side of your neck with my mouth and one with my hand and feel your pulse beat into my lips and and my palm and my fingers.  I want to mark you there, even though I know this is only a dream and the bruise will be gone in the morning.”  

Castiel feels Dean’s cock twitch beneath him.  “Yeah Cas.  OK.  I want that.”  

One beat of blood throbs through Castiel, so hard that when it recedes he feels faint, and his face feels white, and pale.  He traces a finger down Dean’s jawline, from the base of his ear to the tip of his chin.  Then he flattens out his hand and palms Dean’s neck.  The skin there is soft, but prickled with stubble.  Dean’s adam’s apple is a peach pit under his thumb.  It slides up, and down, as Dean swallows.  

He squeezes his hand around Dean's neck.  So lightly.  Not hard enough to cut off air, or to bruise, just hard enough that Dean can feel it.  

Dean’s eyes slip all the way closed.  His cock thickens against Castiel.  “Yeah Cas.  Like that.”

Cas’ lips find Dean's throat, open mouthed, warm and hot, sucking, not kissing. Each contact raising a bruise, then lifting off with a soft, wet sound, then sealing to new skin.  Every new pressure like a drink of wine, sweet and dark and intoxicating.  Castiel  _ is _ like the rain.  A hot rain that never ends.  Dean wishes it could cover his whole body, not just his neck.  He moans, darkly, and Castiel squeezes his throat.  He moans again, deeper.   

“Casssssss.”

Castiel's hand tightens and slackens with the pressure of his mouth, though Castiel is unaware he is even moving it at all, unaware that he even has a hand, or a body, as focused as he is on Dean's neck.  On the taste (salt mixing into the pine).  On the texture (soft and sheened with sweat).  On the  _ pulse _ \-- thud, thud, thud-- Dean's life, beneath his lips, slow but undeniable.  Rising up to the surface to meet Castiel's mouth.  Again, and again, and again.  Until the right side of Dean's neck is all a bruise, and Castiel switches hands, switches sides, and starts again.

“I called you ‘Mine’?” Castiel whispers, against Dean's skin.

“Yeah,” Dean replies, breathless, dizzy with Castiel’s kisses, drunk with them.  

“And you wanted it?” Castiel asks, still unbelieving, wanting to be sure.

“Wanted it so much all the lights exploded, Cas.  Wanted  _ you.” _

“You  _ are _ mine,” Castiel replies, tracing his fingers over the lace of bruises around Dean's neck.

“Yes.”

Castiel sits up a little-- only a little, still holding Dean's neck.  “No -- you don't understand.  You  _ are  _ mine.  My charge, my single purpose, forever.  I was given to you.  To tell you you are holy, down on my knees.  To worship you and show you you are divine.  To put you first, before all others.  To protect you and keep you.  To love you.  Mine, forever.  And I given to you.  Yours.  To do with as you will.”

Dean swallows.  “That true, Cas?”

Cas nods, solemnly.  

“Then don't leave.  Don't leave me, Cas, ever.  Stay here.  Touch me.  Kiss me.  Please.”  Dean folds Castiel's hand into his own and holds it close to his chest.

“OK, Dean.  OK.” Castiel says.

And he does.  He stays with Dean all night, single-minded, devoted, he kisses his hero, his charge, his king.  Every fingertip  _ for thine is the kingdom.   _ Gently over every bruise on his neck  _ the power, the glory, forever _ .  His jaw  _ the peace with passeth understanding _ .  His lips.   _ Amen. _


	8. Chapter 8

One day.  One day only.

In Heaven, Castiel sits cross-legged in meditation, in the Garden.  Bees and butterflies come to him, swarming around him in a cloud; flowers all turn their petals to him like he is the sun.  The seraphim are drawn to him, Ana and Gabriel and Balthazar first, then others; Inias, Hannah, Samandriel, they surround him too, at a greater distance, like the butterflies and the flowers and the bees.  

_ Love _ , he is  _ love _ , he is  _ happiness _ , they can feel it.  They can see it:  light bending around him, colors like a prism, colors on butterfly wings, on bee bodies, on flower petals.  

In all of Heaven, there is not such happiness.  

In all of Heaven, there is not such love.  

They begin to sing, the angels around him.  Soon, the entire Host is gathered, and they sing one song.   _ Love _ they sing.   _ Creation. _  Stars are born.  Dark rocks turn to suns.  Water becomes life.  Because of Castiel, and the love in his heart.  

On Earth, Dean wakes with no bruises on his neck.  His skin is smooth, unmarked, perfect.  He can remember the touch of Castiel’s mouth, the warm rain, wet and hot, he can remember how his skin throbbed; his heart beats faster when he remembers the gentle pressure of Castiel’s hand on his throat.  But there is no ache, when he runs his fingers over his neck.  There is no pain, to make it real.  There is no mark, to stand dark and proud and tell the world that Castiel said  _ Mine _ .  

_ It’s not enough _ , Dean realizes, fingers pressed gently to his own throat.   _ It’s good, but it’s not enough _ .  

Tonight, he thinks, he will ask for more.  

Tonight, he thinks, he will ask for  _ everything _ .

He thinks about it all day long.  Castiel, inside of him.  He releases the bonds, that prevented him from thinking about it before.  They had grown dusty, brittle and tight.  He shakes them off and he is free.  

He thinks about Castiel's cock spearing him open while he brushes his teeth, while he eats his breakfast.  He is riding Castiel, until tears form at the corners of his eyes while he mindlessly pounds nails at the construction site, while he lifts drywall.  While he chews dryly on the sandwich in his lunch.  While he takes off his gloves, his hat, his tool belt, and leaves them in his locker.  “Cas,” He gasps in his daydream as he opens the door of his truck to drive home.  “Harder, angel, please,” while he showers for bed, while he pulls back the sheets. Tonight, he thinks, he is imagining it, what it will feel like, to be full of Castiel.   _ Tomorrow _ , he thinks, he will  _ know _ .  

In Heaven, the colors around Castiel swirl to blues, and violets and threads of garnet.  The light happiness in his heart thickens, and sinks to his groin, and tingles in his fingertips.  The key of the Host’s song turns to minor.  Stars explode.  Nebulas collapse.  There is war, on Castiel’s planets.  Blood is shed, red and hot.    

The song is heard everywhere, in the Garden.  When Dean wakes into the dream there, the flowers in his field have gone crazy.  They have grown wild and numerous and lush beyond imagination.  He cannot name all their colors.  He can barely breathe, for their scent.  They fold in against him when he arrives, wrapping around his legs, his knees, his ankles, caressing his shoulders, the small of his back.  It is as though they are all trying to find his skin, like they are all vying for the privilege.  

But his skin is covered.  Too covered.  He is dressed as he always is in the dream:  faded jeans with a hole in the knee, a heathered grey tshirt that is thin and soft and has lost its shape.  He takes them off.  The flowers, gone mad around him, seem to grow even more, to cradle him, to hold him up from the hard ground, to make sure that everywhere he feels only softness.    

He lies there, naked, head rested on one arm, other hand loosely stroking his cock, eyes hooded, mouth parted, bedded in flowers, waiting for Castiel, waiting for  _ everything _ , staring up at the sky.

Usually, the sky is bright in Dean’s field.  Usually, the sun is yellow and warm and stays high overhead and casts no shadows no matter how many hours of Earth's night Dean passes there.  Usually, Dean has to shield his eyes when Castiel appears, spiraling down towards him in the brightness.

But now a cloud forms.  Now several.  Grey and dark.  Thunder rumbles, like train cars slamming into each other.  It rumbles in the distance, and shudders closer, and closer, as heavy clouds roll in.  

Until lightning strikes, electric blue, at Dean’s feet, and the thunder cracks almost simultaneously, and the air burns with ozone.  With that one crack, the lightning is let loose, striking everywhere, near and far, in the flowers, in the field, on the mountains off in the distance, making the air crackle.

Making the hair on Dean’s arms and legs rise up.  Making his skin tingle.  Making his heart beat faster, and faster.  Catching his breath in the back of his throat.  Smothering him with the scent of flowers, and ozone.  

Castiel does not spiral down out of the sky tonight.  Lightning cracks at Dean’s feet again, and sparks shower over him, and it is so bright that he has to throw his free arm over his eyes.  

And when the light has faded, and the sparks are dying embers on his skin, and he inches his arm away from where it protects his face, there is Castiel.

Standing over him.  Chest bare.  Biceps banded in gold.  White garment clinging to his hips.  Eyes flashing and rimmed in kohl.  Halo crackling around his head.  Wings tall and shimmering black behind him.  He flexes them, and rivers of lightning flow around them.

“Hello, Dean,” he says.  

Dean cannot reply.  There is a god, standing above him, over him.  Not the sun god he knows, gentle and warm and soft.  This is the god of the  _ storm.   _ This is a god that can only be  _ withstood.  _ Dean can feel him, electric against his skin even though they are not touching, and he only  _ hopes _ he will be strong to withstand what's coming.

“I felt your  _ longing. _ ” Castiel continues, face a mask. _  “ _ All day, it called out to me.  And now I see you, waiting here for me, ready, beautiful, like a pearl in the darkest waters.  Perfect, for me. _ ”   _

Castiel's eyes  _ gleam _ .  His cock thickens obscenely, angel garment tented out away from his waist, darkened and wet around the fat head.  “I’m ready for you, too.”  He palms his hard cock.  

“Last night, I was the rain.  Tonight, I am the lightning.”  And lightning flashes all around him, lighting up the storm-dim field, making the flowers into white ghosts.

Dean swallows, and shifts against the flowers.  “Yes, Angel,” he says and licks his lips.  He doesn’t even realize he’s doing it.  It makes lust flare, in Castiel, and he snarls.  

There is another flash, whiting out Dean’s eyes, and when he can see again, Castiel is on top of him.  Body pressed against his with a surging roll, arms straight like columns on either side of his head.

Castiel rolls his body again.  Dean moans.  They are both already so hard.  

“Last night,” Castiel says, and the thunder rolls.

“You said I was rough with you.”   _ Flash.   _ Castiel palms Dean’s nipple, hard and dry.  Dean arches up against him, in rut.

“Yes, Angel.”

“You said I bit you, until you bled.”   _ Flash.   _ Castiel’s teeth skim across Dean’s throat and then  _ sink _ .  Dean whimpers, but withstands it.

“Yes, Angel.”

“You said I told you, ‘Mine’,”  _ Flash.   _ Castiel’s right hand fits itself to the hand print on Dean’s left shoulder, where it  _ sears _ , and flares up a clear, golden, light, that swords up into the air, straight through the clouds.  Dean screams.

“Yes, Angel.”  

“Is there anything you didn’t tell me?”  Castiel asks, his hand still on Dean’s shoulder, pressing deeper, making a mark that will not disappear in the morning.  

“Yes, Angel.”

“Tell me,” Castiel growls, and licks the bite on Dean’s neck, tongue wide and hard and wet.  Dean whimpers.          

He thinks that Castiel already knows.  He thinks that this god is manifested as the god of everything Dean wants.  Every move that he makes, every touch, is exactly as Dean would have imagined it in his most desperate dreams.  Castiel could not be more perfect.  Dean could not be more turned on.  His cock could not be harder.  Some gods control the tides or chase the sun across the sky or forge weapons in fiery chasms.  But this god's nature is to know everything Dean wants, be everything Dean wants.  To be  _ lightning. _

_ Tell me,  _ Castiel has asked, but Dean thinks that Castiel knows.  It is obvious in the way that Dean has spread himself out, naked, waiting for Castiel’s arrival.  It is obvious in the way he writhes and whimpers when Castiel rolls his body against him.  It is obvious from every other pleasure Dean described to him; it is obvious in every look Dean has ever cast in his direction.

Dean thinks that Castiel already knows.  But he wants to tell him, anyway.  He wants to beg for it.  Beg for it from his god.

He is taking too long to answer.  Castiel fucks up against him again, hard, impatient, and he moans.

“Want you to fuck me, Angel.”  He bites his lip.  “Want you to fuck me until I can't breathe.”

“Yes, hero,” Castiel replies, and sinks his hand deeper into the hand print on Dean's shoulder.  Dean screams when a wave of fire rips through him.  “If that is what you want.”

Dean is crying already.  It hasn't even started, really, and Dean is crying, and screaming, and begging already.

His body is going to be  _ destroyed,  _ he realizes.  It makes him feel alive.

 

*****

 

_ Until I can’t breathe, _ Dean begged him, and the lightning burst and flickered inside him, burst free in the fields, on the mountains, jagged and spiked hot from the dark clouds gathered above them.  He crawls backwards down Dean’s body, hands running over his chest, his hips, until he can reach Dean’s cock, and mouth at the base, the head.  He is glad that Dean undressed himself, before he arrived, because if Dean were still wearing any clothes he thinks he would call the lightning down, from his hands, to burn them away, and that he might singe Dean’s skin, in doing so.  

He wants Dean to be singed.  He wants Dean to burn away.  But not like that.  

He lifts Dean’s legs over his shoulders.  He bends forward, and Dean bends with him.  His tongue find the entrance to Dean’s body, and licks in deep.  It tastes so good.   _ Dean  _ tastes so good.  And he knows it shouldn’t, doesn’t make any sense, isn’t how the tongue works,  but somehow Dean tastes even better when he whimpers, and writhes, and Castiel has to hold his hips down with his hands.  

“Easy, hero,” he whispers gently.  “Easy.  Keep pace, with me,” and as soon as he is done talking his tongue laps forward again.  Softer and lighter touches this time, not so aggressive, not so deep.  Easy.  A wind picks up around them, but it is only a breeze.  

_ Mmmmmmm _ Dean tastes so  _ good _ .  He tastes like Fall; bright sun, bright leaves, nights getting longer, and colder.  Castiel laps him up.  His tongue strokes again, and again, and again.  Dean’s thighs become slick with his saliva; Castiel’s chin, his cheeks becoming wet with it too.  Precome leakes down from Dean’s cock, down along his shaft, down into Castiel’s face, and Castiel laps that up hungrily, tongues it into the mix, lets it become another flavor, bitter hazelnut, one more flavor in the spectrum of the Fall.

Dean’s legs are held tight over Castiel’s shoulders and Castiel’s hands are firm and strong on Dean’s hips but still Dean squirms.  That is how Castiel knows it is good for him.  That and the sounds that Dean breathes into the ozone air.  Not words.  High breaths.  Moans.  Short screams.  

They will be long screams, by the time Castiel is done.  That is what he has imagined, when has imagined this, the lightning.  That is what will come to pass.  Dean will scream so hard he won’t be able to breathe.  That is what he asked for.  That is what Castiel has imagined.  That is what Castiel will give.  

Castiel is still licking tenderly, soft, but Dean is trying to fuck himself back onto Castiel’s tongue now, tight as Castiel is holding him.  Castiel holds him tighter, until he can’t move, and continues to lick over him, only teasing the tip of his tongue inside.  And when Dean struggles against him, and can’t move, that is when he breathes out a helpless cry:  “Please.  Please, Angel.  More.”  

Castiel makes sure his arms are wrapped tight around Dean’s thighs, his hands hard on Dean’s hips, and then he fucks his whole tongue into Dean, hard and deep as he can.  Dean’s body tries to buck up, into the touch, but Castiel is holding him too tight, and he is only able to strain against Castiel’s hold, and moan into the wind.

The wind picks up.  The flowers, their petals and leaves, are swaying, now.  If it picks up much more, petals will start to fall.

The inside of Dean tastes… it tastes the same, but  _ hotter _ .  It is still the Fall, but now it is hot cider, still steaming, on his tongue.  He laps into it, wanting more.  His face is a wreck with saliva, precome, his stubble chafed against his own skin from pressing into Dean so hard.  But he wants to  _ taste _ .  The movements of his tongue against Dean, the way he holds Dean down, the way Dean writhes up against him, these he has been able to imagine.  But he has not been able to imagine the  _ taste _ .  He licks into it, again and again, and Dean’s moans have become continuous now, rising and falling with the pressure of Castiel’s tongue inside of him.  

Dean is trembling.  “Cas,” he cries out, voice soft and sounding so lost, “Cas, please.  I’m going to--”

“No.”  Castiel interrupts him with a command, absolute.  Lightning strikes and hits a tree, it cracks and groans as it crashes to the ground.  Castiel withdraws his tongue.  He withdraws his head from between Dean’s legs.  He withdraws the touch of his body, except for where he holds Dean down.  “No.  Not yet.”  He’s not done with Dean.  There is so much more, that he has imagined.  The wind is barely more than a breeze, but he lets it pass over Dean, cooling down his skin, banking the fire there.  “Not yet.”

Dean whines, and tries to strive towards Castiel with his body, but he cannot, he is held too well, and as the cool wind breezes over him he calms.  He quiets.  His body becomes still.  His cock stops leaking, stops throbbing.  His hands release the grass they have been clutched in, and find Castiel’s hands, on his hips, and cover them.  He pants in the stillness, until he can breathe again.  

He  _ withstands _ it.  

Then.  “OK, Angel. OK.”  

“Do I have to bind you?” Castiel asks, and the thunder rumbles with his voice.  

_ No.  Yes.    Please.  No.   _ All these answers through Dean’s mind while the thunder still rolls.  “No, Angel, please.  Not tonight,” he pleads, before his voice becomes quiet.  “Want to feel you.”  He wants to touch Castiel, his hair, his shoulders, his face, more than he wants to be that much under Castiel’s control.   _ For tonight _ .  He thinks.   _ For this first time.  Maybe… _  Maybe  _ many  _ things, with Castiel, in the future.  Maybe  _ anything _ .  

“Anything you want, hero,” Castiel says gently, and turns his head to kiss the inside of Dean’s knee, softly.  Dean is so brave.  He will try to withstand this, without the help of bondage.  He will try to withstand it, only with the strength within his own skin.  So brave, Castiel’s hero.  

Dean is already wet, and slick, and sloppy, but he is not ready to take Castiel yet.  Not by far.  So Castiel removes his right hand from Dean’s hip, and reaches back into his wings for more slickness, better than his saliva, thicker, and fragrant with his own scent.  

He slides his middle finger into Dean, and growls when Dean whines above him.  He slides in in one long stroke, finger straight, and when he is gloved in Dean to the base of his hand, he crooks his finger.  

Another lightning strike.  Dean feels it behind his eyes.  It leaves afterimages in his vision, ghost lightning striking over and over and following his wild eyes as they roll back in his head.  

Castiel does it again.

Dean screams, and his body shakes.  

Castiel crooks his finger a third time, and Dean doesn’t have the breath to scream any more, and his body locks up in spasms.

Castiel withdraws his finger.  Dean’s hole flutters and twitches sadly, too open, too empty, too bare, in its absence.  

“Angel, please,” Dean begs, though he doesn’t really know what he his begging for.  To be full again, maybe.  Just to be full of Castiel again.  That’s what he wanted, isn’t it?  To  _ know _ ?  “Please.”  

Castiel looks at Dean’s hole, fascinated by the way it seems to strive for him.  To want him back, his finger, his tongue, though he is an intrusion.  This is not something he imagined.  He lets his finger reach out, to trace around Dean’s rim.  Little shocks of lightning sparking between them as he circles around, and around.  So many nerves there, he sees with his angel eyes.  So many of them lighting up and sending sparks up Dean’s spinal column, into his brain.  

“Cas please.   _ Please _ ,” Dean begs again.  “I have to, I’m going to, I can’t--”

“No.”  Castiel withdraws his hand immediately, and leans back.  “No, I told you, not yet.”  

“Cas, Cas, Cas,” Dean pants, one ‘Cas’ on each breath, trying to gather himself together, trying to hold on, just for one second longer, and one second longer, and just one second more after that.  Trying to feel the cool breeze on his skin instead of the sparks in his spine.  Trying  _ not _ to look at Castiel, his eyes dark and flashing, his face covered in their combined slick, his lips red and puffy.  

Castiel leans back and lets Dean get control of himself, his heart beating hard with each “Cas, Cas.”  

He fits his hand to the handprint on Dean’s shoulder.  Wanting to feel his claim.  Thinking that the pain, the burning, will knife through Dean and help him cool off, help him make it through this moment.  

He is wrong.  The pain slices through Dean, the pain and the claim and the fire and the golden light and the feeling of belonging to this deity, this god, for all of eternity, and it is too much for him.  He cannot control himself, no matter what he has been asked.  He comes.  He comes in fountains, on his stomach, his chest, on Castiel and Castiel’s other hand, still on his hip.  

Dean comes screaming.  He comes until he can’t breathe.  He comes and Castiel’s eyes flash.

He has never had an orgasm like this.  He doesn’t think this could even only be called an orgasm.  This is a storm.  This is a hurricane trying to rip his body apart.  This is a rite to his god that destroys his body so that it cannot ever belong to anyone else.  This is a tribute.  This is what he offers, of himself, so that he can belong to Castiel.  Forever.    

“Angel,” he whispers, as he goes limp under Castiel, as he sinks into a blackness that pulls him down.  He just needs to hear it.  Wants to hear it, before he passes out, to try to recover.  Just needs to hear it from his angel’s mouth.  

Castiel knows.  Castiel knows what Dean wants, what Dean needs.  “ _ Mine, _ ” he says, removing his hand from Dean’s shoulder and resting it carefully over Dean’s heart.  “ _ Forever.” _  The thunder rumbles again.  

“Yes,” Dean whispers, before he is lost to the black.

 

*****

 

When Dean wakes, Castiel is naked above him, his white garment gone.  Castiel is sat back on his heels, straddling Dean’s hips, stroking his own cock with one hand slowly, gently.  His other hand is still on Dean’s heart. 

His eyes are dark on Dean’s.  “That’s not everything you wanted,” he says to Dean.  Because he knows.  

Dean is still shaky, bones only loosely connected to each other and muscles like water, but he nods his head down once.  

_ Flash _ .  “I want to give you  _ everything _ ,” Castiel says.  “Do you understand?”  

Dean nods again.  “Yes, Angel,” he whispers.  He cannot speak any louder, his throat is scraped raw from how hard he screamed, when he came.  “But ‘m.”  It’s so much effort to talk.  “But ‘m not ready.”  He isn’t.  He  _ withstood _ the first wave of the storm, but his body is wrecked and too tired, too sensitive, to withstand again.

He is a little ashamed.

“No,” Castiel says, when he feels it, the shame, pulsing through Dean, and he presses his hand down harder on Dean’s heart, and he  _ gives _ .  He is the god here.  It is his to give to Dean.  To give him everything, anything.

Dean’s back arches off the ground.  His body is  _ filled  _ with light.  His body is filled with gold.  His vision is so clear, he can see every hair on Castiel’s head, every strand of muscle in the iris of his eyes.  His eyes are blue, they are so blue.  Dean can  _ see  _ them.  He can see little specks of light swirling in them, little bright lights, and as soon as he sees them in Castiel’s eyes he can see them sparkling in the air all around Castiel, centered on his head and spiraling out, and out, around and around again, all through the field, all up into the sky, where they are stars.  

His mouth opens on a moan.  “Cas,” he moans.  “Castiel.”  Does his angel know, that he is the stars?  Does his angel know, that he is so beautiful?  That he is the only thing that is beautiful, here in this garden of flowers in Heaven?  Dean has to tell him.  

His mouth opens, and the light inside him breaks free.  “Beautiful, Cas,” he breathes, and the words spear gold into the grey clouds in the sky.  “So beautiful, angel.”    

There is no soreness left in his body, no tiredness.  The gold, it is everywhere inside him, he feels it under his fingernails, on his eyelids, between his toes, around his cock, which is hard and throbbing again.  He is warm, he is warm everywhere, and he  _ needs _ .  He is warm but he feels  _ empty _ .  

“Angel, please,”  

Castiel touches him gently, thumbs under his eyelids, swiping and turning his freckles to gold, more gold, more shining, warmth, heat, beauty.  “Are you ready for me now, hero?”  He asks.  But he knows.  Every question he has asked, all night, he has known.  God in this field, in this valley.  A lightning strike.  

Dean looks into his eyes so he can see the blue there, and the stars, when he answers.  “Please, Cas.  Angel.  Please.  I have to  _ know _ .  I have to...”  

“I know,” Castiel replies.  He cups Dean’s face with two hands and kisses his lips so softly.  

Then he braces his arms on the ground, and thrusts into Dean where he is still sloppy and slick and wet.  He thrusts in hard.  He doesn’t wait for Dean to loosen around him.  He thrusts in hard and deep and his cock scrapes up against the inside of Dean and Dean’s back arches off the ground again.  

When he is fully seated Dean relaxes back onto his bed of flowers, and shows Castiel his eyes again.  They are flecked with gold, but rimmed with shimmering tears.  

“Mine,” Castiel says to those eyes, to those tears, as they start to leak down onto Dean’s cheeks.  And he thrusts into Dean again.  Dean tries to close his eyes, hide them away, so that he can be battered by the sensation of Castiel fucking him in the darkness, instead of in the impossible light of the stars that flicker around Castiel.  But “No,” Castiel says again.  “Those are mine too,” brushing a thumb at the corner of Dean’s right eye, so that Dean will open them again.  

“Perfect,” Castiel says, and then he fucks him.  He fucks Dean hard and deep.  He fucks Dean into the flowers, through them, into the grass, into the soil.  He fucks Dean as shafts of light start to shoot down through the clouds. He fucks Dean holding his head in one huge palm and his hip in the other.  He fucks Dean as he cries, and pants, and moans, and then screams.  He fucks Dean and his eyes flash.  He fucks Dean and bites his neck again, and says “Mine,” again, growls it into the bite.   _ Until I can’t breathe,  _ Dean had asked him, and that is how Castiel fucks him.     

And now Dean knows.  He knows what it feels like to be split apart on Castiel’s cock.  He knows what it feels like to be full.  He knows what it feels like to ride lightning.  He knows now that he could  _ not  _ withstand it, but that Castiel is so good to him, so kind, giving him light and grace and new strength and a new body to fuck into.  He could not withstand, but Castiel loves him so much he fucks him until he dies and then he brings him back to life.  He could  _ not  _ withstand the godhead, but Castiel is a loving god.    

_ This.   _ This is  _ everything _ .  There is nothing else.  There never has been.  There never will be.  The field is pierced by all the shafts of light breaking through the clouds, and Dean is screaming when he comes.  Screaming so hard he can’t breathe.  Given everything he asked for, everything he wanted.

“Mine,” Castiel says, and replaces his hand over Dean’s heart, as Dean sinks down into the flowers beneath him, and wraps his arms around Castiel’s back, drawing him in deeper, drawing him in close, exhausted from his orgasm, from the pounding of Castiel’s cock, but shivering a little every time one of Castiel’s stars flickers through him.

“Always,” Dean says, with his first breath, with his throat scraped raw.  “Always yours.”     

 

*****  

 

Every night.  

For one year.  Every night.  

Castiel came to Dean every night.  Sometimes he made Dean a crown.  Sometimes he wore flowers in his hair.  Sometimes they talked, sometimes they were silent.  Sometimes they kissed, sometimes they fucked, sometimes they made love, slow and soft and sweet and long in the flowers.  But Castiel came to him every night, without fail, his angel, his dream, his paramour.

 

*****

 

Castiel came to him during the day.  Dean was raking leaves, again.  It was Fall, again.  Crowley was with him.  

“‘The fuck is he doing here?”  Dean asked, pointing the butt of his rake at Crowley, who only smirked.

Castiel’s back was straight, too straight.  His hands were in the pockets of his trenchcoat and his voice was hard.  “Dean.  There is war in Heaven.  Raphael is ascendant.  He means to re-start the apocalypse.”

“So what, we saddle up?” Dean asks, taking off his gloves.  

Castiel barely acknowledges that he has spoken.  “There is a rebellion.  I am its general.  Raphael is… displeased.  He seeks to gain an advantage against me any way he can.”

“Cas,” Dean says, but Castiel ignores him again.

“He has not sent his agents against you yet.  Not yet.  But he,” a tremor of feeling ripples over Castiel’s hard face, the only one that has appeared there thus far.  “But he will.  He will… try to cure me of my human weakness.”

Crowley’s smirk deepens.  

“Cas, what?  No!”  Dean doesn’t know why he is saying ‘No,’ what he is negating, but he knows that something is wrong.  

“I’m sorry, Dean.  This is for the best.”  He takes his right hand out of his pocket, his first two fingers pointed out, reaching for Dean’s forehead.

“Cas!  No!” Dean ducks his head, dodges to the side.  “Talk to me, Cas.  Remember?  That’s the only thing that’s not OK.  When you don’t talk to me.  When you leave.”  Why does he feel like Castiel is leaving?  Why is he so afraid?  Who is this robot, who stands in front of him?  Where is the warm sun god, who wove him so many crowns of so many soft flowers, and placed them on his head with gentle kisses?  

“I’m sorry, Dean,” Castiel says, but he doesn’t sound sorry.  He doesn’t sound like anything.  He sounds like he has turned to stone.  

Because he has.

The second time he doesn’t miss Dean’s forehead.  

 

*****

 

Dean is standing in his yard, holding his rake.  A breeze blows a handful of leaves out of his pile.  A cloud follows the breeze, and covers up the sun.  

  
He feels empty.  His heart feels sore.  He is  _ longing _ , for something.  He doesn’t know why.   

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *So many tears, for these two poor, star-crossed, motherfuckers.*
> 
> This fic originally appeared as chapters 14 and 15 of Burn and Fall Again, a longer fic in which Dean is taken by the Mark of Cain and Castiel has fallen to stay with him in Hell. 
> 
> I am brainheartpizza on tumblr (https://www.tumblr.com/blog/brainheartpizza).

**Author's Note:**

> This fic originally appeared as chapters 14 and 15 of Burn and Fall Again, a longer fic in which Dean is taken by the Mark of Cain and Castiel has fallen to stay with him in Hell. 
> 
> I am brainheartpizza on tumblr (https://www.tumblr.com/blog/brainheartpizza).


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